Michael Bisping was left permanently disfigured by Vitor Belfort.
Not surprisingly, the former middleweight champion doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about “The Phenom” following their UFC on FX 7 headliner back in 2013. That’s where TRT-tor sent Bisping’s eyeball into the third row with a second-round head kick.
These days, the still-bitter “Count” probably wouldn’t piss on Belfort if the Brazilian was on fire (his words). Despite their history, Bisping was still willing to give Belfort his flowers for the ex-champ’s UFC Hall of Fame announcement earlier this month in Montreal.
“When we were in Des Moines, Paul Felder had a little piece for the (video) package where we speak about the greatness of the people getting inducted into the Hall of Fame,” Bisping told MMA Junkie. “They said, ‘We won’t ask you Mike, for obvious reasons.’ I said, ‘You know what? I don’t care. I’ll do it.’ When you look at it and remove all the emotions from it, the man was the UFC heavyweight champion of the world at 19. He then became the light heavyweight champion. He almost became the middleweight champion. He’s the closest thing we’ve had to a three-weight champion.”
Belfort (26-14, 1 NC) retired from UFC with a knockout loss to Lyoto Machida at UFC 224, a second-round loss that was “very satisfying” for Bisping to watch. I’m not sure first-round knockout losses to Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman qualify as “almost” becoming middleweight champion, but we can argue that point another time.
“Was he a massive cheater? Of course,” Bisping continued. “Did he take a lot of steroids? Of course. Were there a lot of other people doing that at the same time? Absolutely there was. I get it. I lost an eye because of this guy. He can stick his Hall of Fame up his ass. But he does deserve it. You can’t deny what he did inside the Octagon. You just can’t deny it. If that’s not a Hall of Fame career, I don’t know what is. Whether you like it or not, he deserves it.”
Belfort, 48, will be inducted during International Fight Week in June.
