Michael Bisping admitted to lying about his vision to athletic commissions in order to compete with a detached retina and essentially one eye during the latter part of his UFC career, including his middleweight title win.
Michael Bisping recently confessed to not being entirely honest with athletic commissions during the latter part of his career. After a brutal knockout by Vitor Belfort in 2013, he suffered a detached retina. This led him to fight his last 11 bouts, including a middleweight title win against Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, essentially with one eye.
On a recent episode of the JAXXON Podcast, Quinton Jackson asked how Bisping managed to get approval from athletic commissions to fight. "I just lied my ass off in every test," Bisping admitted candidly. He even had a secret code with his coach Jason Parillo. Despite passing tests, he was terrified during weigh-ins because his eye looked unhealthy.
Bisping worried that doctors would cover his good eye and ask, "How many fingers?"—a scenario he dreaded. For him, the fight was the easy part; the real stress was potentially getting pulled from the fight after spending money and effort on training camps. Once past weigh-ins, relief washed over him: "Now I know I can fight."
Remarkably, Bisping won seven of his last 11 fights post-injury, including a title defense against Dan Henderson at UFC 204. However, he lost the title to Georges St-Pierre at UFC 217 and fought his final bout against Kelvin Gastelum shortly after, where he was knocked out.
If faced with covering his eye for an official, Bisping and Parillo had devised sound codes to communicate. "We did that a couple of times," he said. Surprisingly, they never used it as officials simply asked if he could see out of the eye, to which he’d reply affirmatively.
"Yeah, 20-20 here, brother," he’d say with a grin.