Though Michael Bisping shocked the MMA world by scoring a stunning knockout over Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 to win the UFC middleweight title, the aftermath was a little off-putting for some. After it appeared that Bisping has a mini-spat in the Octagon following the bout regarding a handshake.
On Monday, a full nine days since he won the middleweight title, the 37-year old Bisping expressed a modicum of regret for the way things went down.
"Let me clarify my side of the story," he said during an appearance on The MMA Hour. "What happened was I went over to Luke and, like I always do, win or lose you always shake your opponent's hand. And I went and shook his hand and it was heartfelt. And then I was having my moment, and I was walking around the Octagon. The Octagon is kind shaped like a circle, with square sides.
"And I was having my moment, and I found myself walking past Luke again, so I wasn’t just going to walk past him and ignore him. I walked past him and I went to reiterate my sentiments, saying listen, again, I love you bud, and he said, ‘I’ve already shaken your hand,’ really aggressively, and he gave me a dirty look. I said excuse me? ‘I’ve already shaken your hand,’ and I said, ‘so that’s how you’re going to be — you’re going to be a sore loser? Well the pardon my French, but go eff yourself.’"
Bisping knocked Rockhold out just three-and-a-half minutes into the first round at their main event bout on June 4. It was the first time Bisping scored a cleaned KO since he fought Andy Bridges in Pride & Glory back in 2004. The whole episode left a bitter taste in Rockhold’s mouth.
The exchange carried over to the post-fight press conference, where the two exchanged heated words and had to be separated.
"I said a couple of things to because I thought he was being an a**hole," Bisping said. "And yeah, I do kind of regret that a little bit even still. I wish I would have been the bigger man and ignored it and laughed and whatever, but I’m emotional guy and it was a lot of talk going into that fight. He discredited me completely.
"So sparks flew, then afterwards in the press conference, I walked it…and as I was walking in he was talking about how he was going to kill me, he’s calling me a maggot, [saying]‘I’m going to destroy this guy, I’m going to absolutely kill Michael Bisping,’ and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. Buddy. Buddy. You just got knocked out two minutes ago, just relax."
Bisping said that ultimately he didn’t let the extra curricular stuff after the fight affect his mood.
"We did get into it back and forth but as you can see I was very jovial throughout the time of course. It’s easy for me to be jovial because I had won, I had gotten revenge and put him in his place. I said everything I said was going to come true, I made that happen.
"But I do regret the negative connotations that surrounded that."
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