Middleweight contenders Tim Kennedy and Michael Bisping will settle their score in the Octagon in a five-round main event at The Ultimate Fighter Nations: Canada vs. Australia. In the meantime, they'll be trash-talking one another with blogs on Yahoo Sports.
Every fighter – myself included – says things like “this is my best camp ever” all the time but, having spent many sleepless nights thinking perhaps I’d never be in camp for a fight ever again, I genuinely feel like I’m in the greatest camp of my life right now. I don’t know if the break recharged my love of the gym or I’m just that excited to be back doing what I love, but I am flying through this camp and can’t wait to get to Quebec City, Canada to make short work of Tim Kennedy on April 16.
I’m sure readers of Yahoo Sport’s MMA section know that I haven't fought in over a year due to a serious eye injury. Basically, I injured the eye in my January 2013 fight against the lovechild of Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds and it got progressively worse and worse and ultimately I was told I had a detached retina. But, after seeing some of the best doctors in the world and getting the best treatment I’m back and I’m back in a big fight, a main event, and against a top-10 fighter in Tim Kennedy on Fox Sport 1.
I suppose readers expect me to respond to Kennedy’s first blog for Yahoo Sports … to be honest, I couldn’t care less about what that guy has to say. He’s a powerful, dangerous fighter but I don’t respect him as an individual very much. I’ve never met the guy, never interacted with him, but when someone continually takes shots at you in the media and on Twitter, you begin to work up an appetite to beat them up.
In his blog he went over all the same stuff he’s been saying about me for years. I’m a dirty fighter, I am a loud mouth, I beat up his friend Jorge Rivera three years ago and then there was the almost obligatory Brit-bashing, complete with references to 1775 and my English accent.
If he’d traveled to other countries for any other reason than to go shoot people, he’d have learned there’s a great, big world out there full of different people, unique cultures and diverse ways of living. And, yes, people outside the United States don’t all sound like Fox News presenters, genius.
To be honest, I can’t even pretend to be interested in his pathetic attempts at trash talk. This is a guy who talked crap about Nelson Mandela on the day of the former South African president’s death, so how can anyone take offense to whatever comes out of this clown’s mouth? He claims he dislikes me for this and that, but the truth is he’s jealous of the success I’ve had in my career – he actually tweets about how much I make in each fight – and he’s jealous that I’m a tall, handsome and suave gentleman while he’s from the shallow end of the gene pool.
On the official poster for the fight, they made it look like we’re the same height but I’m 6-foot-2 while he’s a short, stumpy dwarf-like creature who’d probably make a better living getting shot out of a cannon and getting hired out as a circus turn.
I’m doing my very best to work myself up for this fight – I always say I fight better when I dislike someone – but Kennedy is very hard to take seriously. I’m taking him seriously as a fighter and athlete but, as a person, nah.
Kennedy likes to style himself as a straight-talking good ‘ol American boy, but the reality is he talks out of both sides of his face and doesn’t have the guts to stand up for what he says he believes in.
For example, last year he fought on the main card of UFC 162 in his UFC debut. It was a huge card, and he was damn lucky to be showcased on it, but all he did beforehand was moan about how much more money he deserved and blasting the UFC left and right. For a guy who goes on and on about the American Way and being a patriot, Kennedy sure sounds like a Communist.
Comrade Kennedy thinks fighters should be paid the same rate no matter how much – or in his case how little – value they bring to the company or an event. He doesn’t believe in market value, paying your dues or working your way to the top or any of those uncool things. He wants to come out of the military, do MMA as a second career, not be that great at it, but be paid as much as an eight-year UFC veteran in his very first UFC fight.
And for all his bitching and moaning about how much money the UFC should be paying him at UFC 162, Comrade Kennedy had, hands down, the worst fight of the entire UFC 162 card. It was one of the worst main card fights of last year - it was embarrassing. There was so little actual fighting going on, if they’d had that fight on a school playground most teachers wouldn’t have even bothered breaking it up.
And this is the guy who thinks it is his business to tell the UFC what they should and shouldn’t pay people on their own roster. Even years ago, when he wasn’t in the UFC, he was tweeting about how much money I made for the Jason Miller fight.
Listen, I don’t obsess about what other fighters earn like our socialist friend Timmy does. If someone is getting paid well, providing for their family, great for them. That’s what I am about, too. The only fighter paycheck I’m familiar with has the name “Michel Bisping” on it, but, that said, whatever the UFC paid Kennedy that night was too f-ing much.
What was hilarious to me was that, after blasting the UFC for not paying him enough and then not fulfilling his contract to actually have a fight at UFC 162, Kennedy immediately lost the courage of his convictions and claimed his statements attacking the UFC were “taken out of context”.
“Taken out of context” is a phrase that slimy politicians use when they are desperately trying to claw their way out of saying something they regret. I expected more from the self-proclaimed “American Hero”.
Like I said, it is impossible to take this square-headed Oompa Loompa seriously when he speaks on any subject.
I will get into what I’m doing, training wise, next week, but until then let me end by saying Tim Kennedy is the least charismatic, wannabe excuse of a fighter I’ve ever had the misfortune of being associated with and I’m looking forward to knocking him out on April 16.
Hit me up on twitter @bisping.
