Michael Bisping doesn’t have a chance to defeat Luke Rockhold on Saturday and win the UFC middleweight title.
As in, none. Zero. No way, no how. Ain’t happening.
Common sense tells us this. Their 2014 fight, in which Rockhold submitted Bisping early in the second round, tells us this. The odds, which favor Rockhold by up to as much as 12-1, scream it.
Even Bisping’s son, Lucas, would tell you Rockhold is going to win. On the first episode of UFC Embedded, released this week to preview UFC 199 on Saturday at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif., Bisping is shown picking up his young son from school.
Bisping asks Lucas who is going to win and Lucas picks Rockhold to defeat his dad. Tough kid, but he’s in agreement with, it seems, about 99.99 percent of the rest of the world.
Rockhold is ranked third pound-for-pound, is one of the UFC’s finest overall athletes, routed Bisping once already, and has impressive wins over Chris Weidman, Lyoto Machida, Tim Kennedy and Jacare.
Logic, the style matchup, momentum, the fact that Bisping took the fight on two weeks notice and Bisping’s kid all suggest it should be a runaway win for Rockhold.
But the beauty of mixed martial arts is that, literally, anyone can win at any time.
OK, not anyone. But a legitimate professional with the requisite skills and training can beat any other legitimate professional, no matter how highly regarded, at any time.
We’ve seen it far too often to ever dismiss a fighter’s chances, but over and over we do it. Precious few were picking Holly Holm to survive the first round, let alone to knock out Ronda Rousey last year. But from the opening seconds of the bout, it was Holm, not Rousey, who was in command until the brutal head kick finish that kayoed the seemingly invincible Rousey and made Holm the champion.
That fight brought memories of the 2007 knockout of the great Georges St-Pierre by Matt Serra that won Serra the UFC welterweight title.
There were many, most notably UFC president Dana White, who were touting Renan Barao as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world in 2014. But Barao was routed by T.J. Dillashaw in their bantamweight title fight at UFC 173.
When Randy Couture signed up to face Tim Sylvia for the heavyweight title at UFC 68 – one month and one event before Serra vs. St-Pierre – there were many fans who openly feared for Couture’s safety.
Despite the incredible size differential, Couture easily handled Sylvia and won the UFC heavyweight title.
On and on you could go throughout the history of MMA and see the massive upset. It’s a fair bet that a lot of the newer UFC fans have never heard of Ryo Chonan. He last fought in 2013 and had a 1-3 record in his four UFC fights.
But nearly all of them have heard of Anderson Silva, believed by many to be the greatest MMA fighter in the sport’s history. But in a New Year’s Eve 2004 fight in Japan, Chonan submitted Silva with one of the great finishes in the sport’s history, a flying scissor heel hook.
Yet, every time we’re faced with a situation in which the odds are long, the instinct is to ignore history and go with the overwhelming favorite.
Bisping, who for most of his career has been the UFC’s top villain and the man the fans love to hate, has accepted his underdog status with a surprising calm. It’s almost as if he knows something we don’t know.
“You know, I can’t let any of that bother me, because nobody else’s opinion is going into that cage to fight Luke Rockhold,” Bisping told Yahoo Sports.
The other thing that should lend credence to those who believe in Bisping’s chances is that with at least some of the fights that turned out to be monumental upsets, they weren’t really upsets at all.
Dillashaw, for instance, was a huge underdog and not all that highly regarded when he fought Barao at UFC 173. But he dominated Barao not once, but twice, and is now perceived as one of the world’s best fighters. He’s ranked No. 14 pound-for-pound by UFC.com.
In retrospect, does anyone consider Couture’s win over Sylvia an upset?
The point is, MMA is made for these upsets much more than boxing. Oh, they happen in boxing, but they’re far more rare. And that’s largely because there are more ways to win in MMA than there are in boxing.
A boxer who is being seriously outclassed doesn’t have any other options to turn to in order to change the momentum. But in MMA, if you’re being beaten in the standup, there is always a takedown and the potential of a submission from the ground, for instance.
Rockhold, clearly, deserves to be a big favorite. Yes, we have the evidence of a previous win. He’s also bigger, has better striking and better wrestling.
But Bisping’s attitude is eerily similar to the one that Evander Holyfield had prior to his first fight with Mike Tyson in 1996. Tyson was more than a 20-1 favorite, and Holyfield was perceived by many to be shot.
Holyfield, though, was relaxed throughout the promotion, laughed off the predictions of doom and said repeatedly he believed he would win.
He eventually stopped Tyson to win the belt.
The fact that Bisping, who defeated Silva in February and is on a three-fight win streak, took this bout on short notice may actually help him. If the fight was announced three months out, like often happens, he’d have time to brood over it. He’d hear day after day how no one gives him a shot, how everyone (including, surprisingly, his son) believes he’s going to lose.
It would give him enough time to allow that to get into his head.
But now, on just two weeks’ notice, Bisping won’t have to go through that. He’s not going to hear from the critics nearly as much and doesn’t have time to absorb the doubt by osmosis.
I’m picking Rockhold, of course. He’s a tremendous athlete and a marvelous fighter. Look what he’s done before: He’s just about invincible.
Bisping doesn’t care.
“You have covered this sport a long time,” Bisping said. “Has every one of your predictions been correct? Let’s be honest? Have they?”
He laughed, knowing he didn’t need to wait for an answer.
It’s hard to figure out exactly how Bisping could win. At least when Holm was preparing to fight Rousey, her path to victory was clear: She’d have to outbox and outstrike Rousey and avoid getting caught in the clinch, where it would be Rousey’s territory and the arm bar would come into play.
With Bisping, it’s not so clear.
But if it happens, don’t be shocked.
If Michael Bisping is the UFC middleweight champion of the world on Sunday morning, don’t claim you were shocked.
History tells you that you shouldn’t be.
