Michael Bisping has one of the most inspiring stories of any fighter that has been able to reach the pinnacle of mixed martial arts.
His journey from being a disliked, loud mouth Brit to a beloved UFC champion right at the end of his career is remarkable and that's without factoring in his vision issues.
For a substantial part of his career, "The Count" fought with just one eye after suffering substantial injuries in training and inside the Octagon.
Obviously, you can't fight if you only have vision in one eye but Bisping was able to avoid the doctors and athletic commissions ever finding out.
He recently appeared on the JAXXON Podcast where he spoke about how he lied through the tests and how it would make him incredibly anxious in the build up to a fight that at any point, the plug could be pulled:
"I would think, all they’ve got to do is cover that eye and say, ‘How many fingers?’ And then I’m f*****. So every training camp, the fight was the easy part because I was always terrified I’m spending all this money on a training camp, I’m putting all this effort into it, I’m going to fly off to wherever it is, and then day before the fight, I’m going to get pulled from the fight. So the stress was, it was major. When I would get past the weigh-ins, I was like, ‘Oh my, God, relief, now I know I can fight. Now I’m good, now I’m happy, now all I have to do is go out and fight, I don’t really give a f*** about the fight.”
If anything, Bisping was overprepared for the tests that he would need to go through as he revealed on the podcast that he and his coach, Jason Parillo, eventually abandoned the clever tactic that they had created because frankly, it wasn't required in order for him to make it all the way to fight night.
“So me and Parillo had a thing, I said, ‘If he covers up the eye, go [cough] for one finger, [yawn] for two, or whatever,” Bisping explained. “We did that a couple of times, and to be honest, they never even did it. They just went, ‘Can you see out of that eye?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ and they go, ‘OK.’
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, 20-20 here, brother.’”
Watch the full interview by clicking right here.
