Rogan spotted it, too. ‘Georges is really threatening with that left hook,’ he informed the huge PPV audience. ‘He’s throwing it so wide it’s insane. Michael’s got to be careful about that.’
Georges has very few ‘tells’ in his game, but I had picked up when he was going to throw a leg kick. I was setting him up for one and, instead of moving to check it, I stepped and threw a right hand down the pipe. It detonated right on his jaw. Georges was hurt, big time. His features went blank and I knew he’d seen that white flash behind his eyes. I was taking over. Georges stayed closer to me, which brought my jab into the fight. At this range, where the need for depth perception was less pronounced, I could jab with him on even terms. I could see he was open for the right, and I landed another huge cross that rocked him to his heels.
With the fight moving away from him, Georges shot for the takedown. His level changes weren’t particularly fast but he disguised his intentions very well. I scrambled and regained my balance, only for ‘Rush’ to pull at my shorts for illegal leverage so hard my left butt-cheek was exposed in the World’s Most Famous Arena. It was the most aggressive pulling down of MMA shorts this side of Vitor Belfort’s TRT clique.
‘Don’t hold on the shorts!’ the ref told GSP, but the advantage had been taken. I was down, with GSP on top in half-guard. This was exactly where I didn’t want to be. I clipped him with pushes to the ears, trying to distract him from working. I allowed my left arm to linger as I drew it back and forth towards his head – Georges took the bait. He whipped his left arm from round the back of my head and went for a keylock. As he moved, I shot my arm under him and created enough space for me to plant my feet and power up into a standing position.
Seconds after the stand-up battle resumed, I cracked him with a lead right hand. I could feel my groin protector moving around for some reason; it was a distraction I could have done without while matching wits with the most cerebral tactician in the game.
His jab was still effective but I was landing with increasing regularity now. I timed another low kick and landed a left hook. I timed – and caught – another kick, sending Georges sprawling backwards to the fence. We exchanged jabs and I heard my corner shouting, ‘He’s feeling it, Mikey!’ I landed the left kick to the head again, this time he barely got a hand up to block any of it. St-Pierre looked tired and I was chasing him now. I feinted with a jab and then a kick so I could land the right hand on his temple.
The horn ended a much better round for me. ‘Your round!’ Jason said. We’d both landed 17 shots, but I’d landed with the heavier artillery. I asked my corner to take a look at my cup. The challenger had pulled so hard on my shorts that he’d snapped the lacing which held my groin protector up. I always wore metal Muay Thai cups because they gave better protection, but now it wasn’t tied in place the extra weight made the thing move around inside my shorts.
I expected the takedown to come at the start of the third round but, despite my best efforts, St-Pierre ended up in my full guard. Again, this was not where I wanted to be but I landed a solid right fist to his jaw from the bottom. Then an elbow strike cut St-Pierre’s forehead wide open and another right opened the cut on his nose further. GSP tried to change position, posture up, and get his ground and pound working, but I realised I was giving far more than I got from the bottom. I was content with the rate of exchange; I would stay there slicing his face with elbows until St-Pierre gave me an opening to get up.
Georges threw everything he had into two elbows; one of them caught me above the hairline. He punched me in the body. Two more elbows from me tore at his eyebrows. He was bleeding all over me now. He pressed his face against my stomach, hiding his cuts from my elbows. For the third time in as many fights, my body and trunks were covered in blood. This time, though, it wasn’t my own. While St-Pierre was so distracted by his bleeding I drew my soles to his hips and thrusted him off of me. The fight was back on the feet.
There was a cut on the bridge of his nose, too. He dabbed away at his eyes with his fingertips. Blood, I saw, was flowing into the challenger’s eyes. I knew the feeling. I landed a big right hand. He landed one of his own. He landed an inside leg kick. I waited for another, it came, and I threw the right. GSP ducked under it and – BANG!
I was on the floor. It must have been a left hook. Didn’t see it. He was in my guard. Much higher than before. Boom! A left elbow I didn’t see. Boom! Another. Boom! Another. Another. Another. Another. A punch. Another punch. Elbow! My head was against the cage. I turned my body to the left. He was still hitting me. I turned right. I found a little space and tried to get up. He had my back. His hooks shot in. I couldn’t turn. Rear naked choke. I fought his forearms. His squeeze was very tight. My brain was starving for oxygen. My thinking went fuzzy. I pulled at his arms but I couldn’t escape. I wouldn’t tap. I’d worked too hard for this title. Everything went fuzzy, then black …
…
…
…
… three men were kneeling over me. Their faces too close, their voices not close enough. One of them was John McCarthy. His big shoulders were blocking whatever was happening behind him. An instant later I knew what was happening behind me.
Georges St-Pierre was celebrating his win.
I’d lost.
The title was gone.
‘Rear naked choke’ is a misnomer. The technique doesn’t work by obstructing the windpipe to stop you from breathing; it works by compressing the carotid arteries and jugular veins, limiting the blood flow to the brain and causing a temporary cerebral ischemia. In other words, you pass out.
It’s not uncommon to wake up feeling confused, but I was fully aware of my surroundings even as I lay on the canvas. Georges walked over and helped me to my feet.
‘It could have gone the other way, Michael,’ the new UFC middleweight champion said.
On The Joe Rogan Experience six months later, GSP confirmed that he and his team had made good use of the worst-kept secret in the sport.
‘The thing with Michael is he’d adjusted very well to this [eye issue], he adjusted so he kept me in his line of sight [with the good eye] all the time. So I had to wait for him to commit with the right hand, so he moved his line of sight to the left, before I could come over the top with the left hook. It was always when he missed the right hand he could be caught with that left hook.’
St-Pierre added: ‘Bisping is a great example of hard work, perseverance and that anything is possible if you are courageous and don’t give up. He is a tremendous fighter and great role model for the sport.’
Funny, that’s exactly what I think of Georges St-Pierre. He is the man, someone you can point to as a role model in the sport; a champion who left the sport richer than he found it.
I hated losing my title. I’d given a decade of my life, months on end away from my family, my right eye and paid a butcher’s bill of body parts to get that belt. I never wanted to lose that. But, it didn’t cut me to the bone to have lost it to Georges, a clean fighter and one of the very best mixed martial artists of all time.
‘How you doing, Dad?’ Callum asked as he folded his long legs under the chair next to mine.
Rebecca had brought our two eldest kids into my dressing room (Lucas was still too young to come and was at home with his grandparents).
‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ I answered truthfully. ‘I thought I had him in the second but, y’know, he’s one of the best and he caught me. It’s okay. You can’t win them all.’
Ellie sat down on the other side of me. ‘You definitely hurt him in round two,’ she said, ‘you were doing great.’
The conversation was upbeat. I’d shown my kids over the years that in any competition where there’s a winner, there must be a loser. And while it’s okay to be disappointed with a loss or setback, you don’t get dejected.
‘It’s a sport,’ I told the media at the post-fight press conference twenty minutes later. ‘In sport, one side wins and one side loses. Tonight, Georges was the better man and
he beat me fair and square. He caught me with a good shot, put me down and I remember trying to fight his hands in the choke but he was very strong. All those push-ups and protein shakes paid off for him, and good for him.
‘What’s next? I dunno. I feel like I can go again right now. I’ve no injuries at all. I feel great. I don’t think this is the last you’ll be seeing of me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE
The Friday after the fight in New York Ellie and Cal were back in school and I was driving myself, Rebecca and her parents to the Filling Station, my usual brunch location in Orange County. I’d missed the turkey chilli cheese omelettes.
The news from Las Vegas was the pay-per-view number for UFC 217 was very good. Of course, I was gutted my reign as world champion was over but, years from November 2017, that disappointment would be long gone while the payout from the St-Pierre fight would still be earning interest.
The car radio was switched to Sirius XM and The Luke Thomas Show was on. Thomas is an MMA journalist, a big-bearded ex US serviceman with a passing resemblance to Bluto from Popeye fame. Luke had breaking news to report: ‘Anderson Silva is out of UFC Shanghai on November twenty-fifth. Middleweight Kelvin Gastelum is left without an opponent for the headline fight of the UFC’s first event in mainland China …’
Turning the volume on the radio down a little, I turned to Rebecca in the front passenger seat.
‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘Should I take it?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘You can’t do that.’
I raised my eyebrows at her.
She shook her head, ‘You’re crazy …’
‘Two paydays for one training camp,’ I said.
My wife looked at me like I had two heads. ‘Michael, you can’t do that.’
I sure could. When we pulled up outside the Filling Station restaurant I fired off a quick text to Dana White.
Hear you need a main event for China. I know a guy.
Every fight since Anderson Silva had a sense of potentially being my finale but, ironically, when I flew to China I didn’t feel in my heart that, win, lose or draw, this would be my last fight. When I boarded that plane to Shanghai, I was travelling those 14 hours to go there and win. This wasn’t just a nice payday. It was a chance to do something a bit special and underline that I always battle back from adversity.
I’d no illusions about getting my title back. Even as champion I was taking it one fight at a time. GSP was supposed to defend the belt against Whittaker early in 2018 and Romero and Rockhold were already positioned as challengers after that. I was pragmatic.
‘The first rule of MMA,’ Forrest Griffin told me a long time before, ‘is don’t be forty.’
I would turn 39 in three months. The Gastelum fight would be my 39th as a professional mixed martial artist. Time had almost caught me. So while I was healthy enough to fight – I was going to fight.
Coming back and beating a genuine contender the same month I lost the title? That wouldn’t be nothing and, touch wood, would set me up for a big farewell fight in the UK in 2018.
Bless my innocent heart. I’d assumed the dog and pony show I’d put on to get licensed in New York meant I’d quickly get approval to fight in China, where the UFC essentially serves as the regulator as well as promoter.
I’d assumed wrong. Even though I had literally one week to train for Kelvin, the UFC had me driving all over town doing another MRI, a heart stress test, blood work, you name it – along with, yes, another bloody eye exam.
As chance had it, my eye doctor had listened to The Luke Thomas Show too, while driving to his practice.
‘I expected this call,’ he said when he picked up the phone. ‘I heard there’s a UFC main event in need of a middleweight …’
‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘I’m reaching for another vine.’
When I earned my first UFC contract by winning The Ultimate Fighter season three, Kelvin Gastelum still had four years of Cibola High School in Yuma, Arizona, in front of him. He was 22 years old when he followed in my footsteps and won TUF 17 in 2015 and was 25 when we fought in front of 15,128 Chinese fans at the Shanghai Arena. A squat puncher with a sawn-off right cross and fastball left hook, Gastelum was a young man hurrying towards a title shot.
Making 185lb twice in 21 days was hell on earth. I remember looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, for the first time since before UFC 100, that I looked gaunt and underpowered. It’s just not in my nature to make demands or ask for special stipulations in a fight, but I really wished I’d told the UFC I wanted this fight to be at 195lb.
While hitting the pads with Jason backstage, though, I told my trainer the fight wouldn’t be going the distance. I felt good. I felt sharp.
That feeling fell away once I got to the Octagon. I felt like I was chasing myself across the Octagon in the opening minutes. I didn’t feel fully present in the moment. In hindsight, I’d drained myself physically and emotionally for the GSP fight. Nevertheless, I began to settle down in the middle of the first round.
Then I was lying on my back looking at the lights.
I had no clue what had happened.
While nodding to the men asking me if I was okay, I pieced it together. I’d lost the fight by knockout.
When I got back to my feet I used self-deprecatory humour as a front to hide just how jumbled my thoughts were. Then I saw the finish play out in slow-motion on the giant screens around the arena. Just like GSP had, Gastelum had countered my cross by firing a left hook that my right eye didn’t see coming.
Kelvin hit plenty hard, but there’s no way that right + left combo would have knocked me out in the past. I’d have recovered, regrouped and got back into the fight. Instead – for the first time literally in my life – I’d lost two fights in a row.
Backstage everybody was saying nice things. No one else would have the balls to attempt what I’d just tried to do. I was a warrior. A legend.
Nothing anyone says makes you feel better in those lonely moments after a big loss, but you appreciate that people care enough to make the effort.
My dad and Little Mick had come out to see the fight – even on 14 days’ notice they flew halfway around the world to support me. Jacko, who now lived in Australia, had flown to China to see me, too, and I’d had him work my corner along with Daz, Brady and Jason. They all joined me and my fight team in a post-fight drink. These people had literally followed me to the ends of the earth, and that kind of friendship is always worth a toast or two.
Sixty years after Shanghai’s nightlife was driven underground by Mao’s Communist Party, the most ridiculously plush nightclub in the city is perched 24 floors above street level. M1Nt has a vast dance floor, a lounge and restaurant with incredible panoramic views of the city. The centrepiece of the lounge is a giant floor-to-ceiling shark tank. The neon-lit water gave off a brilliant blue-white.
We sat down in deep leather chairs around a black marble table. The music from the dance floor on the other side of the bar was exactly loud enough. Drinks were on the way. Win or lose, I’d always gone out after a fight but, on that night, having six of the people who’d supported me the most with me, I was ready for a great night.
An hour in, I went over with Jacko to one of the 40-foot floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around the club. Glasses in hand, we took in the breathtaking and almost futuristic view of the biggest city on earth. A grey mist rising over the Yangtze River delta was blasted purples and lime-greens by lights from the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shimao International Plaza, two of the six or seven buildings that looked gigantic even from a distance. It was like something out of a movie.
A strobe light from the direction of dance floor yanked my attention back inside. We went back to our table. I sat down next to Jason this time and caught up to the conversation. There was another flash. I dropped out of the banter. The second blaze of white couldn’t have come from the dance floor. A dreadful feeling crawled around my guts. I close
d my right eye, leaving my good eye open. I breathed in and darted my left eyeball left and right.
Flash!
White light spiralled behind my vision.
I moved my good eye again.
Flash!
No …
Flash!
No, no, no.
Flash!
Fuck. Not this eye too.
As soon as I was off the plane at LAX airport I was on the phone to my eye doctor.
‘My good eye,’ I told him. ‘My good eye is doing those flashes like the left did. I think the retina is detached in my good eye.’
My doctor did what he could to calm my nerves. He told me the flash I’d described didn’t necessarily indicate a detached retina but, I don’t mind admitting, I was terrified. I’d left the club in Shanghai soon after that first flash. Daz and Jason followed me back to the hotel to make sure I was okay. There were more flashes as I tried to sleep. It was identical to what had happened after the Belfort fight.
My doctor got me an appointment with another specialist within 24 hours of me calling him from LAX. I couldn’t believe I was going through those tests again – and now for my left eye.
As ever, I used humour as a force field.
‘So, do I pick my white stick up on the way out, doc?’ I asked the optometrist jokingly.
The tall, middle-aged woman with the tied-back blonde hair was quiet for a second too long. ‘I don’t think we are there yet,’ she said.
What!?! I was fucking joking.
I’ve fucked myself, I thought, my pride, my ego have really fucked me this time.
After what seemed like an eternity, my left eye was diagnosed as experiencing posterior vitreous detachment. There are millions of fine fibres attached to the surface of the retina, and as we age tens of thousands of those break off. It was natural enough, but it was happening to me earlier in life, and in my good eye. I was told that, because the process was already under way in my eye, there was an increased chance that the fibres would rip a hole in my retina.
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