Trading Shots: Will Michael Bisping ever get his due from MMA fans?

Michael Bisping retained his title against Dan Henderson at UFC 204, but did he finally convince fans to accept him as the UFC middleweight champion? Or is changing the minds of the public next to impossible once it has developed an opinion of you? Retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss.

Downes: Ben, last night Michael Bisping (30-7 MMA, 20-7 UFC) successfully defended his middleweight title against Dan Henderson (32-15 MMA, 9-9 UFC) in Manchester, England. And yes, this is something that occurred in 2016.

I’m not interested in asking if it was a “robbery” (it wasn’t), or in debating the value of knockdowns on judges’ scorecards. Instead, I want to know your opinion of Bisping the champion. Despite beating Luke Rockhold and Henderson, many people still don’t seem to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Can a fighter ever change our opinion of him? You know how they say you only get one chance to make a first impression? It seems like we rarely change our thoughts on a fighter. We still can’t believe Bisping is champ. Mike Perry could volunteer at a home for at-risk youth and hand out meals to the homeless – MMA Twitter still wouldn’t like him.

Fowlkes: The answer is yes, a fighter can change our collective opinion, and there are a couple basic ways to do it.

The easiest way is to do something that revises our opinion downward. This can be accomplished inside the cage or out. Maybe you lose a bunch of fights in a row. Maybe you commit some heinous acts in your personal life. Maybe you just get on Twitter and lay out all your dumbest conspiracy theories. It will shock you how fast that stock can drop.

But it seems like what you’re really asking is how to go from a negative to a positive in the minds of fans, which is admittedly tougher to do. I think it can be accomplished in the cage, though it takes a lot longer. I’d argue that, to some extent, Bisping is already on that path.

Right now he can say he’s beaten Hendo, Rockhold and Anderson Silva, all one right after the other. You can stick the age asterisk next to the first and the last, and, if you insist, the fluke asterisk next to the middle one, but the more fights he wins the harder that is to sustain.

Say Bisping beats Ronaldo Souza next. Or Chris Weidman. Or Yoel Romero. Not only will we revise our current opinion on his fighting skills, we’ll go back in our memory banks and make his past exploits out to be even better in retrospect. People will be racing each other to see who can be the first to say that they always knew Bisping would be great some day.

Failing that, you can change opinion to some extent by changing how you interact with the public. Look at Gegard Mousasi. A few years ago he was an unmotivated, emotionless disappointment. Now he’s the laconic bad-ass whose expression remains hilariously unchanged even when he’s spitting venom at the current champ after knocking out a former one.

Change is possible, Danny. Do you not remember when Chael Sonnen was a mild-mannered, nice guy real estate agent?

Downes: I’ll give you Sonnen, but I would also argue that just because a statement isn’t true 100 percent of the time, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the dominant trend. You can tell me about your grandpa who smoked a pack of unfiltered cigarettes a day and lived to be 90, it’s still an aberration from the norm.

I just wonder if Bisping will always have to win one more fight. Silva, Rockhold and Henderson weren’t enough. Now he’ll have to defend his belt a second time, something that a lot of current champions have struggled to do. Let’s say he loses. Then everyone will come out and say, “See? I told you he wasn’t good enough!”

Silva has four losses and one no-contest in his past five fights. Yet there’s still admiration and respect for the 41-year-old fighter. Even when he stepped in on short notice to fight Daniel Cormier, there was a good deal of people who thought he could pull it off. Bisping has the most wins of any fighter in UFC history and he’s still given the Matt Serra treatment – as if it’s proof that, hey, anything can happen in this crazy sport. Even Bisping became champion.

Maybe it’s not a question of fighting ability as much as it’s about personality. Conor McGregor never fought a wrestler. Then it didn’t count because Chad Mendes was out of shape. The Jose Aldo KO was a fluke. Then he was getting a gift by fighting Nate Diaz at welterweight, until Diaz won. Now he doesn’t deserve the lightweight title shot because all he did was fight Diaz at welterweight.

Much like politics, sports are polarizing. Someone either sucks or is a monster. Part of that is a result of PR and promotional tactics, but the consumer still holds some responsibility. I don’t how much of this has to do with Bisping’s less than sportsmanly actions through the years, but isn’t it easier for fans to understand Bisping as the villain? English fans certainly feel differently about “The Count,” but doesn’t that just prove that we stick to our camps no matter what? When was the last time you cheered for a British athlete at the Olympics?

Fowlkes: MMA ain’t the Olympics, Danny. McGregor is huge in the U.S. Fedor Emelianenko was a favorite of American fans for years. In Japan they still love them some Wanderlei Silva, and Jeff Monson went and became a Russian citizen, for crying out loud. The MMA borders are relatively open.

I think we can give Bisping his due without losing perspective. Yes, Bisping has more UFC wins, but he didn’t face the quality of competition Silva did and there’s no shame in admitting that. (In fact, if you compare their performances against common opponents like Sonnen, Henderson, and Vitor Belfort, it doesn’t look great for Bisping.) His personality has definitely turned some fans against him, and his reputation for bending the rules probably doesn’t help. (And against Hendo, oops, he did it again.)

Could Bisping turn those people around? Some of them, maybe. But that might require a change in personality which, let’s be real, he does not seem eager to make. If he keeps winning, then even the people who hate him will eventually be forced to admit that he’s a damn good fighter. But until he defends that belt against someone in the top five, he’d better get used to the doubters. Something tells me he doesn’t mind.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.