Michael Bisping: I fear for my future; TRT will be outlawed in MMA.
On this week's UFC World Podcast, Michael Bisping reveals his frustration at his eye injury, and insists he is refusing to believe that his career is over. "I'm in my prime right now, and you start to feel like a bit of a deadbeat at times. But what are the alternatives, what am I going to do ? I'm not going to go down to the Job Centre and look for a job, because I'm financially stable." He admits the fighter's life is a roller-coaster. "When you're winning, they think it's great; you put in a bad performance and all of a sudden the pendulum swings, the axe falls fast and falls hard."
The middleweight insists he has undergone great changes in the last 9 years, as a man, and an athlete. "I've matured in the sport. I was very immature at the start and I was surrounding myself with the wrong people that were bad influences on me. I'm a completely different person now."
"I give everything. I've given my heart and soul. I've given my life to the UFC, I really have," he says. "You've no idea. I look like a completely different person now. I have cauliflowered ears, I'm covered with scars, I've got one eye, I've got one knee... I get out of bed in the morning and it takes a long time for my body to get going and get warm before I can move fluidly because of the injuries." Nine years in the UFC, he explains, has taken its toll on his body, yet he "wouldn't change it for the world".
"I've loved every minute of it and I've lived my dream," he told Davies. Bisping has advice for young fighters. "Anybody listening, any aspiring fighters - wear your head gear. I do now. I never spar without it now but all my life I never wore head gear. I was macho, I said I didn't need it, I don't get hit, I'm tough, I'm elusive, I've got good head movement, I'm fast and plus, I can take a punch... so who cares? But it's the years of sparring with no head gear thats ultimately led to this [the eye injury]. I'm positive of that."
Bisping also takes it as "a huge compliment" that so many other middleweights call him out, but believes that TRT should be outlawed from the sport."I think it should be," he explains to Davies. "We're not trying to put a ball in a basket, we're trying to take somebody's head off in this sport. You can dress it up and say it's the most disciplined and respectful sport, but we're trying to knock each other out at the end of the day and the last thing you need to be doing is enhancing people's natural testosterone to six times its normal level. It's just ridiculous. Once you start getting old and your body stops producing so much testosterone, if you've got the skill level and the mental toughness to continue fighting at that level, then great. If you haven't that's when you retire, you go and coach and you hang up your gloves and say 'thank you', I've had a great time." Finally, Bisping insists his dream is to get the eye fixed, and face Chris Weidman in 2014.
