Silva smiled, but his eyes were on fire.
Finally, when handed a microphone to address the 5,000 British attending the weigh-in, I had this to say: ‘When I step into that cage tomorrow I’m doing it on behalf of myself and Great Britain. This man is a cheat! This man is a fraud! All the needles in your arse, all the steroids will not help you, you pussy!’
So, why did I go all out to piss off the most talented fighter of all time?
Simple, I respected him far too much.
There’s no shame in admitting that I had massive appreciation, admiration, really, for Anderson as a fighter. I had to completely change that mindset to give myself the best chance of winning.
Silva preyed on respect. For years, I’d watched opponent after opponent fail to challenge him to the best of their ability because they went in going, ‘Oooh, I’m in with the legendary Anderson Silva.’
The Rashad Evans loss in 2007 was caused by the folly of giving too much respect to an opponent. And so, I seized upon Silva’s positive steroid test. That one event was the entirety of his life, in my mind’s eye. He was a fucking cheat. Another Dan Henderson, another Vitor Belfort. He deserved contempt, not respect. Mentally, I diminished him until he was the size of a normal fighter.
This wasn’t a trivial mental exercise. Silva was a master mind-gamer himself, often exchanging meticulous respect (the bowing and all that nonsense) to con opponents into ‘respectful’ martial arts contests that suited his style. Then, inevitably, he sprung the trap and smashed them to defeat as brutally as anyone in the sport.
My vocal disrespect sent the message none of that would work.
Between UFC 120 on 16 October 2010 and the Anderson Silva fight in February 2016, there was a gap of five years, four months and ten days between me fighting in England. That was literally, almost to the day, half of my UFC career.
The atmosphere crackled with energy as I stepped into the Octagon. I was back in the fortress, ready to defend my undefeated record on British soil. Everybody I knew from Clitheroe was there, like my mate Burge, people I used to train with years before like Ian Freeman, my friends from the acting world like Noel Clarke, Guy Ritchie, my mum, my dad, Rebecca – everybody.
Referee Herb Dean brought us together in the middle of the cage for final instructions. When Dean was finished, Silva offered both gloves, stretched into fists. He also bowed in the traditional form of respect one martial artist shows another. I accepted the show of respect and said, ‘Good luck.’
I meant it. Despite what I’d said during the previous two months, I respected the man and didn’t want either of us to win due to some fluke occurrence.
The fans erupted as the moments ticked down to the opening buzzer. This was it. My title shot, my legacy and the final verdict on my 35 professional fights, 12 years as a professional, 25 years of training, thousands of miles of road work, hundreds of days away from my family.
There was no way to beat Silva on the back foot, I knew. I had to take the centre of the Octagon right away, be intelligently aggressive and push the pace. Silva would counter and hurt me, he’d play his gamesmanship and make me miss, he’d pretend nothing I did was working but – whatever happened – I knew I could not let him blunt my aggression.
I landed first, and not just a single shot but a combination. Silva switched from his natural orthodox stance to his preferred southpaw, back and forth, back and forth, and I could see him performing calculations behind his eyes. He threw – and landed – several punches. The speed was equal to the accuracy. I had no trouble landing on him, though. I kept pressing him backwards, landing ones, twos and even several three-punch combinations. I worked his lead leg and got the better of a clinch. He wasn’t as hard to hit as I had expected, although hitting him with the same combination or set-up twice proved difficult.
As if a timer had gone off, Silva surged forward in the last 30 seconds. I had to stand my ground – and did – clipping him with a big left hook that staggered him as the buzzer sounded.
As the horn blared out to end my 10–9 round, Anderson attached a goofy grin on his face and came in to give me a hug. It was another one of his psychological set pieces. Congratulations on winning a round against the great Anderson Silva, his embrace inferred. I shoved him backwards – hard – with both hands and told him what he could use a Thai sex pill for.
You are not coming to my country and condescending me in front of my own people. I am just getting started with you – see you back here in one minute.
I sat down on my stool feeling good.
‘Our round?’ I asked Jason as he and the team worked on me like a Formula 1 pitstop.
‘Our round. You’re doing great. Don’t let him bait you into bullshit,’ was Jason’s final instruction.
Anderson reached deeper into his bag of magic tricks in the second.
Silva’s reflexes were extraordinary. He could go from nought to nuclear in a split second. But one of my long-held suspicions was already confirmed – he relied on discouraging opponents from throwing combinations as much as his own reflexes to avoid them. I’m a stubborn bastard at the best of times, and I trusted my cardio and skillset to land strike numbers three, four and five even if numbers one and two missed.
This was no unmasking, though. Silva was every bit as good as he’d looked during his championship reign. On several occasions, his anticipation of my attacks was so exact it gave me the disquieting sensation we were doing fight-movie choreography. I had to push such thoughts away as the imposters they were. He was just another fighter who I needed to keep the pressure on.
A minute into the second round, Silva backed himself against the fence, squared his hips into a normal standing posture and waved me in. ‘Come on, man,’ he said in that Michael Jackson voice of his, expecting me to play the game of firing punches while he dodged like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies.
Unfortunately for Anderson I’d seen this ruse before (most memorably vs Stephan Bonnar in 2012). His squared-up stance made dodging punches easier, not harder, and the proximity to the fence all but ensured no one would try a full-power kick and risk catching their toes in the chain links.
It was a con, not unlike those can’t-win carnival games, and I’d have none of it. I stepped back three paces to the centre of the Octagon, put my hands on my hips and shot Silva an unimpressed look. I’m not one of the overawed challengers you’ve clowned and beaten for years, I said with my eyes. The British fans played their part, too, cheering my bravado and letting Silva know he was a long way from Brazil.
Because of my role as a TV analyst, I knew for a fact that Silva hadn’t even attempted a takedown in over six years. Like with the Cung Le fight, that knowledge enabled me to bring a whole other arsenal of strikes to this fight. I used a push kick to position my opponent against the cage and a roundhouse kick to his right thigh.
While we were exchanging strikes, Silva caught me with a counter – an elbow to the ear – that was so fast commentators John Gooden and Dan Hardy didn’t see it.
Despite taking that and several hard strikes, the second round was going even better than the first for me. Silva knew it, too, and in the final minute he dropped down off his toes and loaded more TNT in his gloves. Silva pressed forward but I sent him into reverse with a push kick. Then I flicked a jab on my way inside and – BAM! – a drum-tight left hook buzzed him badly. Before he could recover any equilibrium I twisted my hips into a right cross and then arched another left to the jaw. BAM-THUD-BOOM!
I’d decked him! He was down, hurt!
The British fans roared like the place had caught fire. I followed Anderson to the ground – taking an up kick from the lightning-fast Brazilian on the way down – into his guard and began hacking away at him like a madman.
(The up kick was incredible, I have to add. I could see in his eyes he was rocked – but this man is such an instinctual fighter he still fired and landed a counter.)
I had no fear of his BJJ guard. I wish I’d got him down ear
lier, because the 30 seconds of ground and pound were my most dominant of the fight so far. I smacked him with both fists and elbows until the round ended.
The fans went crazy at the end as I walked to my corner. I felt great. It was hard; I was a little bloodied already – but I was putting on the performance of my life. I was two rounds up, 100 per cent. I just had to keep focused like the edge of a scalpel.
‘You’re doing well,’ Jason said. ‘Stay focused. Rip the body when you find him open. You are getting close enough.’
For the third round, Anderson shot off his stool like a man determined not to lose a third straight round. He was coldly aggressive, less content to give ground and, after getting hurt and dropped by the left hook, he wore his shoulders locked in formation either side of his chin.
Silva’s punches and kicks were as accurate and slicing as the strokes of a diamond-cutter. He is the only fighter in a quarter-century to have landed over half his strikes. He thudded a kick into my mid-section. I refused to back off. I chased Silva to the fence and landed three of a four-punch combination. Silva’s right fist sent sweat bouncing from my head. Moments later I felt his nose stab between my middle knuckles as a right cross crunched into his face.
‘This fight is living up to the hype,’ commentator John Gooden stated.
BISPING! BISPING! BISPING! BISPING! rumbled around the arena.
Anderson slammed his left knee through my defences and into my guts. He chased me along the fence. We exchanged shots and, somehow, my mouthpiece fell out. I pointed the ref’s attention to it, lying on the canvas, and Herb Dean went to retrieve it.
For a split second I thought about the long-term consequences of professional cage fighting. I wanted my gumshield back in before my incisors were knocked out or my face was grated from the inside out.
‘Mouthpiece!’ I said to the referee. The Spider read my preoccupation as a weakness and attacked – ripping in strikes to my head. He caught me in a Thai clinch and threatened a knee strike but I escaped and stepped back.
That was a lull in the action, as far as I was concerned, and the referee needed to step in and replace my mouthguard. ‘Mouthpiece,’ I turned and repeated to the referee.
Silva blasted into the air like a rocket and drove his knee directly into my face. I crumpled to the canvas with blood gushing from the bridge of a broken nose. Before I’d finished falling Anderson had landed, turned and was walking towards the centre of the Octagon.
BEEEEEP!
The round ended two seconds after Silva’s knee had struck.
If that had been the end of the fight, it would have haunted me for the rest of my life. I’d fought an intelligently aggressive fight for 14 minutes and 58 seconds, hurting the GOAT in the first round, dropping him in the second and out-striking him 63–36. And then I’d completely disengaged from the task and invited a calamity to happen.
But it wasn’t the end of the fight. My face felt collapsed but I was still with it. ‘I’m not knocked out!’ I told Herb Dean. ‘I’m okay!’
One of those statements was more accurate than the other, but Dean confirmed I wasn’t out of the fight.
‘No, you’re not knocked out,’ Dean said to me clearly. ‘End of round.’
Twelve feet away Silva had thrown himself into celebration. Somehow, his entire team burst into the Octagon to join him. Confused commissioners wandered after them; emasculated grandparents trying to persuade kids that it’s bedtime.
Silva then leapt up and straddled the Octagon fence and celebrated even as officials on both sides of the mesh – including Dana White – pleaded with the excited Brazilians to accept the fight was not over.
Somehow, his manager Ed Soares was in the Octagon speaking with him but, at the opposite gate, Jason, Brady and Daz were refused entry by security. Some official brought me my stool to sit on and for several long moments I had three perfect strangers all talking at me. The referee told them to clear the cage. Bags of blood gushed out of the cuts and I badly needed the assistance of a cutman and my team. The cutman appeared above me momentarily, only to be marched away by some random official without so much as applying grease to my lacerations.
Finally, Jason and Brady sprinted over to me. They were told I needed to return to my corner (there’s no such rule – but the Octagon was a complete clusterfuck by now).
‘You’ve still got this,’ Jason said calmly. ‘You can still win – this is still your fight.’
When I raised my head once more the Octagon had been cleared. Anderson Silva was pacing for the fourth round to begin. I rose off my stool.
‘Michael Bisping does not look like himself,’ Dan Hardy told the television audience. ‘He looks dazed. He looks confused.’
In fact, mentally/cognitively I felt okay – physically I was a car wreck. My right leg trailed behind me as I moved across the canvas; my full weight had collapsed on top of my bad knee and the bottom half of my leg was numb. My nose was broken and I couldn’t breathe through its collapsed nostrils for the rest of the night.
But I wasn’t done.
I can do this! I swore behind the blood and my bruised eyes. I can do this!
That’s when I heard it. The roar.
The roar of the British fans rolling tighter and tighter until I could feel the soundwaves moving the hairs on my forearms. They still believed I had this, too. For a full decade, no matter what, they’d always believed in me. I can’t describe what that cheer did for me. Whatever confidence Jason had instilled, whatever self-belief I’d dragged from the bottom of my soul – these people doubled and tripled it.
I let the referee’s signal release me. I went out and took the fight to Anderson Silva all over again.
We had both reached the championship rounds hurt and tired. The fight had become a battle of wills. I expected Silva to pounce on me but, instead, he skipped around on the outside for a full minute. I continued to walk him down until I trapped him against the fence. I pumped out combinations: an inside leg kick followed by a foot stomp into a jab, a right cross, a left hook, a right hook and another left.
‘Great work by Michael Bisping! His hands are really fast and Anderson Silva is struggling to keep up with him,’ Dan Hardy said on colour commentary.
Silva remained against the cage, looking for a big counter, as I kept the pressure up. I switched up my attacks constantly, trying to make it harder for him to read what I was doing next.
BISPING! BISPING! BISPING! BISPING! BISPING! The fans were heard again.
In the inverse of my stance, Anderson is right-handed but fights as a southpaw – which makes his jab feel almost as hard as a cross. He speared at my face with it half a dozen times during the fourth round, puncturing my already bruised features above and below the left eye. With the cuts I’d already sustained, my entire face and neck were awash with blood.
Once again, he launched a lightning raid in the final 40 seconds. A corkscrew uppercut plus left cross combination buzzed me and opened the gash under my eye a little wider. I timed his next attack and sent him careering backwards with a right hand. The round ended.
The most ridiculously talented improvisational mixed martial artist ever had the same strategy for each opponent: ‘Be Anderson Silva.’ At the end of the fourth round he went back to his corner with the knowledge that wasn’t enough. Not against me, not on that night. He’d emptied out his bag of magic tricks. He’d gone through his arsenal of special weapons. Yet I was still marching him down.
The fourth round was my most active of the fight; I threw 80 strikes, all but 12 of them power punches and kicks, and out-landed Silva by a third. I was sure I’d taken a decisive round.
‘You are winning this fight, Mike,’ Jason said. ‘He’s looking to counter with something big when you got him against the cage. Keep smart pressure on him.’
The cutman could do nothing with any of the axe wounds on my face. In the seconds before the fifth and final round I looked up at one of the big screens suspended 140ft in the air. There wa
s my face, shredded raw.
The cut above my left eye was drowning my good eye with a constant pour of blood. Every blink smeared the blood across my eyeball. Whenever I was far enough away from Anderson’s striking range to risk it, I’d scoop the blood on the tips of my fingers and then wipe it on my shorts.
Silva went for the knockout right away – I barely blocked two head kicks thrown just moments apart.
Unable to breathe through my nose, I had to curl my lips and drag air over my mouthpiece for long stages of the fight. (Opening your jaw is a huge no-no in a fight; a strike to a slack jaw increases the effect of the strike and risks a broken jaw and broken teeth.) My oxygen levels must have plummeted, because I was more tired in that last round vs Anderson than in any in my career. The blood loss wouldn’t have helped, either. Blood was landing on my shorts in such quantities the cloth could no longer absorb it. Red streaked from my face to my torso to my shorts to literally my ankles.
The Brazilian was fighting on fumes, too, I could see him biting down on his mouthpiece as he stalked forward, throwing every last watt of power into his strikes.
The referee brought in the doctor to look at my cuts, but I wasn’t worried the fight would be stopped so late on cuts. ‘Do you want to continue?’ the doctor asked. Of course I did.
Anderson walked towards me with his palms open. We touched both our gloves in respect. It was genuine and hard earned.
The legend whipped a big left cross in. I matched him with a hooked right cross that sent him backwards against the cage. I gave chase but missed the follow-up and – BANG! – I was sent staggering backwards by something.
Silva had uncorked the front kick to the jaw that had so iconically laid out Vitor Belfort. I was hurt and Anderson went for broke. His knee thudded into my guts, then my chin. He kicked my nose and the already contorted cartridge felt like it snapped. Everything he sent into the air was intended to land with a fight-finishing detonation.
But I refused to go backwards for long. I landed a heavy one-two combination to his mouth. My left hook landed once, twice and a third time. Then he clubbed my jaw with that Filipino back fist. I heard him gasp as I swung a kick to his mid-section.
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