Issue 124

January 2015

Luke Rockhold may not have lived up to his promise of a first-round finish against Michael Bisping, but that didn’t stop his one-armed guillotine from being any less impressive.

When two opponents step inside a cage and go toe-to-toe for all the night’s spoils, it can produce the type of moments that live with fight fans forever. There’s an even more special feeling in the air that simply can’t be explained when two fighters who have a genuine dislike for each other face off before they start to scrap.

That’s what fans at the Allphones Arena in Sydney, Australia witnessed when bitter rivals Luke Rockhold and Michael Bisping finally fought after what felt like a lifetime of trash talk. Things even got so heated that Rockhold offered to bet his entire purse on finishing Bisping within the first round. It took 57 seconds longer than the Californian anticipated, but the finish did earn him an extra $50,000 bonus check for a ‘Performance of the Night’.

Once the bell rang, Bisping pursued Rockhold around the Octagon, trading single shots, before an accidental clash of heads midway through the first round opened up a nasty gash across ‘The Count’s eye and, according to him, caused significant memory loss, which ultimately sped up his eventual downfall. 

Rockhold wasted no time in the second round, landing a devastating head kick to side of Bisping’s cranium, which sent him hurtling towards the canvas. However, instead of throwing a barrage of punches, the American decided to show off some more of his rather impressive ‘legit-su’ skills by becoming the first man to submit the Brit, using a one-armed guillotine choke to seal the deal. 

Although the bad blood between the two nearly boiled over in the run up to the fight, Rockhold had nothing but praise for his opponent after their bout.

“I do my homework. I know that Michael has been in the business for a long time and I’ve been watching him fight,” he explained. “I knew how to approach it, I knew what he would bring and I knew what I could do. I just wanted to take my time and not get overaggressive and try to finish in the first round like I was talking about.

“I knew it was a possibility but I knew I had to be patient and fight the way I need to fight. “I caught him real clean with the thickest part (of the shin) – right on top of the head. It was definitely an exciting moment and I go for the kill like always. I’ll take what I can get and his neck was there, so I guess I got a submission this time.”

With three finishes in three fights in 2014, Rockhold has set himself up alongside a host of other middleweight contenders for a shot at the winner of Chris Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort at UFC 184. With a performance like this it seems like he might just have made a strong case to jump straight to the front of that competitive queue.