Sorry, Dana White, “The Count” duped the doctors.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Hall of Famer and former Middleweight champion Michael Bisping has been retired for seven years and transitioned quite nicely into UFC color commentary. Still, one question always lingers: how the hell did he pass athletic commission eye exams for the 11 fights … when he only had one working eye?
If you recall, Vitor Belfort knocked out Bisping in 2013 with a head kick, and that’s what changed Bisping’s life forever because it caused a detached retina injury, which led to him going blind in his right eye.
Recently, Bisping revealed some of his pre-fight secrets on the JAXXON podcast.
“I just lied my ass off in every test. Like I even had a stupid little code with me and [Jason] Parillo,” Bisping said. “I would pass the pre-fight test somehow, and then at weigh-ins, the [commission] would want to check my vision. I was always terrified because I didn’t have [my fake eyeball] then, and my eye looked terrible. It looks worse now, but back then, it was a little bit better. You could clearly see when you looked at it that it wasn’t healthy.”
I would think all they had to do was cover my left eye and ask, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ And then I would be f—ked,” Bisping added. “So, every training camp, the fight was the easy part; I was terrified because I am spending all of this money on this camp, putting all of this effort, going to fly to wherever I needed to be, and the day before the fight I’m going to be pulled from the fight. The stress was so major. When I would get past weigh-ins, I would be so relieved because I could fight…the stress was insane.”
“So me and Jason Parillo had a thing where if the commission covered up my eye [for a pre-fight test], and he would cough if it was one finger or yawn if it was two fingers, or whatever. We did that a couple of times,” Bisping concluded. “To be honest, they never even did it. They would go, ‘Can you see out of that eye?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeeeah,’ and they were like, ‘Okay.’ I was like, yeah! 20-20 vision over here, brother.”
It is difficult to figure out what is more insane: the fact that Bisping fought 11 times with one eye, including his Middleweight title win over Luke Rockhold (watch highlights), or that 11 different athletic commissions, which included California, Canada, New York, England, and China, couldn’t figure out he had one working eye.
Nevertheless, Bisping left his mark on the sport because he was willing to sacrifice his health for the love of the MMA.
