Luke Rockhold doesn’t think much of Michael Bisping. The former UFC and Strikeforce middleweight champion is coming off a victorious return to the Octagon with his second-round win over David Branch last weekend, and in his post-fight interview, he took aim at the next title challenger Georges St-Pierre. On a recent episode of UFC Tonight though, he took aim at a familiar – Bisping, the man that beat him for the title.
Rockhold isn’t cool with the fact that Bisping chose to fight fringe contender Dan Henderson, then took a fight with returning welterweight legend GSP, who has never competed at middleweight before. And Rockhold being Rockhold, he was blunt with his assessment of Bisping’s reign (transcript via MMA Fighting):
“I think it’s the worst in UFC history. No one has ever gotten that treatment, no one has avoided all the top contenders. He was supposed to fight Jacare (Ronaldo Souza), he avoided that, he was supposed to fight Yoel (Romero), he avoided that, and somehow he’s getting away from this fight Whittaker. He found Dan Henderson, the number 14th-ranked at the time, and now he’s going for GSP. He hasn’t done anything.“
Rockhold did give interim champion Robert Whittaker, who has defeated the likes of Jacare and Romero, his props for fighting the best:
“That would be Robert Whittaker, that would be the real champion, that’s the man who is fighting all the guys.”
Bisping’s recent talk of possibly retiring after the GSP fight isn’t exactly a shock to Rockhold either, and he’s guessing that Bisping won’t ever face a top contender:
“I’m going to put myself in position. He’s going to have a choice. Either he stands and fights like a man, or he runs. And we all know what he’s doing. He’s ran from the start and it looks like he’s going to run to the finish.”
This does kind of fly in the face of the fact that Bisping took the UFC 199 fight against Rockhold on short notice and he knocked Rockhold out to win the title in the first place. But there’s no disputing that since Bisping has won the belt, he hasn’t exactly faced the best middleweights. Bisping will fight GSP in the main event of UFC 217 in November.
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