Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping was surprisingly understanding of Georges St-Pierre vacating the title he took from him at UFC 217 in November
St-Pierre had previously fielded questions regarding a contractual stipulation which insisted that he would have to defend his UFC middleweight title if he beat Bisping.
GSP pulled off a spectacular finish of the Brit yet vacated the title a matter of only weeks later. Bisping has expressed ambivalence in St-Pierre’s move, claiming that it has had both ‘pluses and negatives’ for him:
“He’s a prick,” said Bisping (via MMAFighting). “He’s a prick, god bless him.”
“I’m gonna be brutally honest here, it’s a double-edged sword. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. By the way, Dana White threw me under the bus when he first found out. He wasn’t happy with Georges and he said, ‘Yeah, well he cherry-picked Bisping.’ That doesn’t do me any favors! He didn’t cherry-pick me, but I did say that. I said Georges wanted to fight me because he thought I was an easy fight and this and that, and he got the win, and then he vacated the belt. Now he vacated the belt because apparently he had to go to the hospital after our fight and he thought he was gonna be paralyzed and he had a bad neck and all this type of stuff. I don’t know. He just doesn’t fancy doing it again.
“In one respect, it’s good for me because – as an MMA fighter, as a boxer, whatever it is – if somebody beats you, you never want them to lose again because if they get beat, then the person that beat them, it has a negative impact on you. Like, ‘Oh, they could have beaten me as well.’ So he’s never going to fight at 185 again, that’s good. I’m the only person at 185 he ever beat, nobody at 185 is ever gonna beat him. So cheers Georges, thanks for that. But at the same time, it looks like a bit of a bitch move, you know what I mean? So there’s pluses and negatives.”
