Henderson: ‘Even Brits were happy I knocked him out’
Few athletes know the power of television as well as Michael Bisping. The Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight contender has compiled…
Few athletes know the power of television as well as Michael Bisping. The Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight contender has compiled an 18-2 record, taken on all comers, has displayed an action-packed style, and is accessible to media and accommodating to fans.
Yet, on a list of the most disliked – perhaps despised would be a better word – UFC fighters in the United States, Bisping would be near the top of the list.
Dan Henderson, who knocked out Bisping in the second round of UFC 100, insists the anti-Bisping sentiment extends beyond the U.S. borders and to England, where Bisping is from.
You know what, Henderson said prior to UFC 101 in Philadelphia in August, I even have a lot of British fans coming up to me and telling me they’re happy I knocked him out to finally shut him up.
Since his stint as the coach of the U.K. team on Season 9 of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV, Bisping ranks alongside swine flu and leprosy to American mixed martial arts fans.
To be kind, they don’t really like him all that much.
He didn’t go into the show as the most popular fighter, either, given his reaction following a hotly disputed victory over popular American Matt Hamill at UFC 75 in London in 2007. He was surly at the post-fight news conference and concedes his behavior was not my finest hour. Just prior to the news conference, he learned his father had been attacked in the arena parking lot and he was on edge.
