Quitters Never Win

by Michael Bisping

  ‘Ferfuckssake!’ I said more than once.

  My temperament darkened the energy in the room. I was the same in the van as it looped its way through Deansgate’s deserted streets. We pulled up alongside the service entrance to the venue. The van door swung open and we climbed out into the cold autumn air. There was a noticeable difference between the cold and quiet air outside, and the warm humidity and noise inside the packed Manchester Arena.

  If I warmed up in the same dressing room I’d been in at UFC 70 or UFC 105, I couldn’t tell. I barked at Brady again; more than once.

  Then, about an hour before the fight, something levelled out inside my mind.

  Brady was sat in front of me, thrusting fight gloves over my already-wrapped hands. He was fully focused on his task, sure, but I knew his eyes were locked in a downwards position because they didn’t want to catch mine.

  Brady pushed my left glove on. Then the right.

  ‘Feel good?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, knowing I needed to say a lot more.

  Brady Fink is a great guy who takes shit from exactly no one. But all night he’d been doing just that – because he understood his friend was going through a motherload of pre-fight anxiety.

  Some friend, I thought. I felt horrible.

  Like I had on the phone with Callum in another dressing room years before, I took off the mental armour and became a fully functional person again.

  ‘Brady, I’m sorry for being such a twat all day,’ I said, breaking the silence in the room. He looked up for the first time all night. ‘Mate, really, I’m sorry.’

  He shrugged. We looked at each other for a second longer. Then he enjoyed a silent chuckle in front of me while shaking his head.

  Yeah, Brady knew me. He knew the whole stupid process. He knew I could be a right arsehole fight week. He knew I didn’t mean to be. He also knew that after the fight was over I’d be mortified by my behaviour and apologise profusely.

  And then – we both knew – the process would be completed by everyone taking the piss out of me without mercy for days afterwards. That’s when everyone got their own back. There would be impressions of my mood swings, which would draw howls of laughter at my expense. I’d have my own words twisted into darts and thrown back at me in bars and restaurants. Then, it would be my turn to sit there and take my medicine.

  Yes, Brady was familiar with how it was going to go.

  Or … maybe not this time. Because then I started to laugh along with Brady. Not silently, though. Loudly! It felt good!

  Brady looked at me with a ‘Why are you laughing?’ expression.

  ‘All of you – guys, guys – listen. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been a miserable arsehole all night. I don’t know why I’m stressing like this and putting us all through this. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen tonight? I lose a fight? I’ve lost before and it wasn’t the end of the world.’

  A weight lifted off my shoulders as I spoke and I added: ‘I do really appreciate all of you being here for me, away from your families all week. I’m sorry I’ve been a dick …’

  Without turning his body, Jason’s head spun round from watching the undercard fights: ‘You are the biggest wanker, Bisping!’

  The sound of a British-English curse-word deadpan delivered in Jason’s hybrid New York/California accent was too much. Daz and Lorenz cracked up. So did Brady and Jason. The vicelike tension I’d felt all night just melted as we all fell about pissing ourselves.

  We all started talking. The music was cranked up. I began to hit pads with Jason. The energy built and built. I felt better. I felt like myself. I felt like the champion of the world.

  I didn’t go through the process of putting back on the mental armour. I never put it on again; didn’t need it. I was a different fighter, a different man now.

  There was a knock on the dressing-room door. It was fight time.

  ‘This isn’t UFC 100,’ I told Jason as we left the dressing room.

  It had been seven years since Manchester had given me that amazing, inspiring welcome at UFC 105. They were there for me when I needed to put UFC 100 and the knockout to Dan Henderson behind me. We were here together again for the rematch.

  The entire camp – the entire plan – was based around avoiding Henderson’s arched right cross. Of course, I knew better than most the ‘H-Bomb’ was his primary weapon.

  In the later stages of his two-decade MMA career, Hendo was content to spend long moments doing next to nothing offensively. The threat level he eradiated out, though, was constant. He always had enough energy to throw one of those big right hands. And – bless him – one was usually all he needed. Henderson’s punching style would horrify boxing purists; but, in MMA, when opponents had to worry about the two-time Olympian’s takedowns, kicks and back fists, torque was more important than technique.

  The opening minute was rigidly tense, all feints and range-finding. Then a right cross swiped the bridge of my nose, tearing open the scar tissue that had grown over the cut caused by Anderson Silva’s knee.

  Henderson ducked very low and to his right whenever I threw my cross. He was intelligent and experienced, of course, in using his 5ft 11in stature as a defensive advantage.

  He landed a solid right, and I gave him a nod and a smile. I planted my left shin into his guts. It stung him into surging forward and he almost threw himself to the canvas trying to land an axe of a right hand. He missed another a few moments later. He badly wanted to land that H-Bomb.

  Meanwhile, I was almost as anxious to land my left hook. Several got through; most were blocked. Henderson carried his right fist very high near the ear, almost like he was clutching an invisible satellite phone. I tried the lead left hook once too often – BANG!

  With 42 seconds remaining of the first round, UFC 100 exploded into the present as Henderson landed the H-Bomb dead on my chin; my legs went stiff and I was sent sprawling to the canvas.

  No! No way! This isn’t happening again! No!

  This was different to UFC 100. It had to be. I wasn’t knocked unconscious. I had enough about me to try the up kick that Anderson had got me with. It didn’t land. But – it changed Henderson’s trajectory through the air. He missed his patented leaping hammer fist that he’d aimed at my jaw.

  The challenger landed in side control, kneeing to my right side. I dodged an elbow strike + righthand + another elbow. With everyone in the area thinking I was one shot away from going out, I spun on my back. I need to get my legs between me and his fists. I raked his face with my heel.

  He was now on the left of me, though, and his right hand that much closer to his target. A hammer fist landed on my temple. A fist to my ear. His fingers pressed down on my eyes so I couldn’t see – STAB! – an elbow spiked into my orbital bone. The pain was startling.

  Fight! Fight! He’s not taking my belt! Fight of my life! Now! NOW!

  He drew his arm up for another strike. It landed. He drew up again – and I sprung off the canvas. We were back on our feet. He was swinging, hacking away with his fists like a madman. I was calm, giving myself every chance to weather the storm. I was able to deflect almost everything but the force of his blows threw us both off-balance. With my back against the cage I threw a right cross – it bounced off Henderson’s shoulder and knocked him backwards two steps.

  Henderson smiled at me – but didn’t advance. Whether he saw I wasn’t close to being finished or made the decision he’d used up enough energy for the first round already, Henderson called off the assault.

  With the fans in a frenzy, we glared at each other for several moments. We were ten feet apart, far out of range. I had time for an inventory. My left eye – my good eye – was a mess. Blood was gushing into it and my fingertips felt a bruise the size of a slice of orange swelling up. It was a bad contusion that, I was sure, would get worse and limit my vision. My legs felt solid, though. My equilibrium was there. There had been no white flash behind my eyes when I got dropped. I was okay. The crowd kept
the noise at a deafening level as I skipped forward and threw a head kick. He blocked it and the round ended.

  ‘Your conditioning is there, man, his mouth is open already,’ Jason said in the corner. ‘You were winning that round and he caught you at the end.’

  ‘What was it?’ I asked.

  ‘The right hand,’ Jason said. ‘The big right hand. Stay focused.’

  ‘I’m alright,’ I said.

  At the start of round two I went back to the game-plan: intelligent pressure. I threw my left hook, kicked his thigh and his calf and jabbed. I tried to keep him guessing. I began to time his footwork – as he stepped to his left, I beat him to where he was going by skipping to my right and landing lead right crosses.

  ‘Bisping is finding his rhythm,’ my former opponent turned colour commentator Brian Stann told the broadcast audience.

  Another combination – an inside leg kick followed by a right cross followed by a jab – pushed Henderson backwards. He smiled at me. I landed a harder inside leg kick, a harder right hand and, this time, a left kick to the head that the American only partially blocked. The crowd went nuts. I’d taken over the fight. Hendo threw a leg kick of his own – but I knew what was next – I stepped back before the H-Bomb was off the launch pad. I threw a right cross to distract him and whipped up another left kick to the head. It landed. The stutter-step confused him. I was able to land another lead left leg to his jaw. He disengaged for a few moments. A right cross found a home. I was in control.

  Another lead left shin to the head rocked him. Another right cross thudded into his cheek. Henderson now covered up in the ‘peek-a-boo’ defence made famous by Floyd Patterson in the 1950s and again by Mike Tyson in the 1980s, so my one-two punch combo follow-up was partially blocked. A kick to the beltline sent him scuttling around the circumference of the cage. I chased and landed another right cross. The fans were going crazy.

  BANG!

  I was down! That fucking right hand again! But, no, it wasn’t as bad as in round one. My legs felt fine and I managed to wrap them around Henderson’s waist as he threw himself down on top of me. I held the challenger tight in my BJJ guard for the final minute of the round. Henderson smothered me with his hands but, more importantly, I smothered his ground and pound. Unlike the previous round, I took no damage.

  ‘The whole world knows it’s coming,’ play-by-play commentator Mike Goldberg said during the replay of the second knockdown, ‘but Henderson still connects with the H-Bomb!’

  Despite the knockdown, I felt like I’d won the round. I’d probably pulled level on the cards if the three official judges had scored the first round 10–9 for Henderson rather than a 10–8.

  Whatever, there were three rounds to go and I felt coldly confident.

  ‘You’ve started to take control,’ Jason confirmed to me. ‘Push him back with the kicks, fire the right hand.’

  Another stutter-step + left kick landed in the first 20 seconds of the third round. Henderson was going backwards, conserving his energy and, I knew, trying to get me to chase him into a trap.

  ‘That’s the thing with Hendo,’ Stann said. ‘He can be throwing no punches into the last thirty seconds – but if he just lands one he can end the fight. This is a really smart plan by Dan Henderson. He knows he’s not going to outpace Michael Bisping over twenty-five minutes so he’s staying patient and waiting for what he knows best – the knockout.’

  Henderson was backing up in a crouch, his chin tucked down so far it was swallowed into his chest. The beef of his shoulders seemed to surround his temples. There was barely a square inch to aim a punch at. And all the while he ambled backwards, I knew, he was carrying that H-Bomb in one glove and the detonation device in the other. He wasn’t throwing much but what he did was aimed directly into my swollen left eye. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  In order to not give Henderson an opportunity he couldn’t create without a mistake from me, I used constant movement. In and out, side to side, and different attack from a different angle every time. It’s absolutely the correct strategy to use with an opponent like Hendo. The problem by the third round, though, was that I had to keep Henderson within an increasingly narrow field of vision. Put simply, I had to remain in front of him because my peripheral version was becoming nonexistent.

  The level of concentration I needed to maintain – at 5:20am – was inhuman. But I landed combinations, kicks, jabs, left hooks and lead rights. I noted Henderson would sometimes come to a complete stop and I timed that to land a huge kick to the back of his legs. That clearly hurt him.

  ‘LET’S GO, BIS-PING! LET’S GO, BIS-PING! LET’S GO, BIS-PING!!’ reverberated around the stands.

  The challenger threw a fastball right at the two-minute mark. It missed. A full minute later he threw the next one – directly into my rapidly closing left eye. Within moments my eye was almost swollen shut. He became a blur under the bright lights.

  Now Henderson was looking for a breather. I gave him a left-hook/right-hook combination. He steadied himself on the fence after the right thudded into his cheek.

  ‘Bisping has made the adjustments,’ Stann said.

  ‘Just like against Anderson Silva,’ Goldberg added.

  ‘He did it against Anderson Silva, he did it against me – he’s done it to a lot of fighters,’ Stann continued. ‘He gets rocked early, makes adjustments and goes on to win the fight.’

  But Henderson still had his moments – targeting my swollen eyes over and ever. My eyes were slits in blood-drenched curtains. One reporter, Chuck Mindenhall, wrote my face wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of Fangoria, the magazine dedicated to horror movies.

  Another one of those bastard right hands struck directly on the left eye. Nevertheless, I’d dominated the round – landing triple the amount of strikes and easily stuffing Hendo’s two takedown attempts.

  The fans knew it, too. They roared at the end of the third round. I gave them a thumbs up, took my mouthpiece out and showed them I had the Union flag on it.

  We’re going to do this. I got it.

  An accidental kick to Henderson’s family jewels gave the American a much-needed time-out at the start of the fourth. The fans clearly didn’t buy he needed 85 seconds to recover and booed lustily. I didn’t buy it either; he was wearing a protective cup and had taken a kick to the balls, not undergone a fucking sex change.

  Henderson was much more aggressive after his second minute’s rest. He threw combinations, his leg kicks came back into the fight and he caught me with a solid knee to the jaw. My ‘good’ eye had now become my ‘other bad eye’. I was relying on stolen glimpses here and there, like when you are driving a car uphill into blazing sunlight.

  But if I couldn’t see, I could sense. My right hand thudded home once, twice, three times. Henderson still had no counter to my high kicks. I worked his body and his legs. Henderson continued to throw giant, oval punches on the assumption he only needed to land one. But, I allowed myself to think, I’d already taken his best shot while he was fresh. He wasn’t going to hit me any harder now.

  ‘We got this,’ Jason said before the final round.

  Although the fifth and final round began at 5:32am local time, the British fans showed no sign of fatigue. They screamed encouragement at me as I prepared for the last five minutes of another fight that, perhaps, would be decided in the final round.

  ‘Hendo is starting to go hunting now,’ Stann said.

  In the last round of a career that began in 1997, Henderson went for broke to win a UFC world title on his third attempt. He threw more strikes in the first minute than in any of the previous three rounds. His best was a right hand to the left side of my head that, quite honestly, I didn’t see until I watched the fight back days later. I adjusted my stance so I could peer out of the cracks of my eyes. Hendo threw another big right, I saw it, side-stepped, and landed a big hook and then a kick to the ribs that made him exhale hard. I kicked his guts again. I stuck an arrow of a right cross in him
. Then a left hook.

  Henderson looked up at the clock on the giant screens, calculating, no doubt, when to throw what he had left into the fight. I landed a right uppercut. Henderson caught me again on the eye with a solid punch. With 1:45 left on the clock, Henderson shot for a takedown. We scrambled and he ended up with a half-nelson, pressing me against the cage. I popped out and, by the way his outline swayed and staggered, I could tell Henderson’s reserves were gone. With my opponent virtually stationary, I threw and landed a flying knee strike that struck the chin. The fight ended seconds later.

  I was confident I’d won. I’d been the aggressor for 23 minutes of the 25-minute fight; I’d landed over 40 more significant strikes. The scores were read out: ‘49–46 … 49–48 … and 49–48 … declaring the winner … AND STILL … !’

  During the walk-outs half an hour before, the British fans had done what they felt they had a duty to do – boo Dan Henderson. Afterwards, though, with Henderson confirming his all-time-great career was over, the Brits saluted him.

  ‘Give it up for Dan Henderson,’ I encouraged them. ‘He just kicked my ass, man. Dan, good job. He’s tough as old boots. You’ve gotta respect a legend.’

  The fans responded with a resounding chant of ‘Hendo! Hendo! Hendo!’

  Fight-day nerves aside, I’d long since gotten over UFC 100. In fact, without that 2009 result, I might not have developed into the fighter that beat Anderson Silva and won the world title. I wouldn’t change a thing about that first Dan Henderson fight but, when fans in the future look at my record, they’ll see I won the rematch.

  Backstage, the UFC medical staff only approached me once about going to the hospital before calling in reinforcements. This time they went to get the big guns, my manager Audie and Dana. They were both waiting for me in my dressing room after I’d showered and put on my clothes. I don’t think they saw that I needed Daz to help me in and out of the shower due to my entombed eyeballs, but they could have been right there the whole time for all I could see.