Rockhold: UFC’s route taking us away from heart of the sport

The UFC needs to realize a return on a $4,000,000,000 investment. Middleweight champion Michael Bisping wants to make as much money as he can, while the music lasts. So The Count’s first title defense was a rematch vs. Dan Henderson; their first fight is widely considered to be the greatest KO in league history.

Bisping’s second defense will be against returning welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, who has not fought since 2013. If Bisping wins, he will presumably fight the #1 contender, but if GSP wins, he is likely going to want to drop back to welterweight and even spoke of making 155 [to fight Conor McGregor].

Top contender Luke Rockhold is not impressed.

It’s chaos, isn’t it? I think they’re running down a slippery slope, said Rockhold on FS1’s UFC Tonight as transcribed by Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie. Things could easily get out of hand, you never know what these guys are going to do. Georges isn’t going to fight anybody in the top of our division if he wins this fight. Bisping could potentially be in the same boat.

I’m bummed they took this route. It’s kind of taken away from the heart of the sport. It’s about the top guys fighting each other. This isn’t WWE. This is fighting. It’s what it’s all about. So when they make moves like this, it definitely makes you question a lot of things of what you’re doing and how you approach things.

So what’s next to Rockhold? He doesn’t know and the division is so muddied, he recently called for a fight two divisions up vs. Fabricio Werdum.

There’s a lot of fights happening and everyone is kind of tied up, so it just kind of depends what their thoughts are, said Rockhold. I know Yoel’s out there waiting. I don’t know what his program is exactly, but if they want to put a real belt on the line I would gladly go fight Yoel for it.

But I want security. If I’m going to go fight a top guy, I want to know what my next fight is to unify the title and get that thing going. I’m not here to dance around. I’m here to fight for titles and fight for championship money.

Rockhold also predicted GSP vs. Bisping.

I think Bisping wins the fight, he said. It’s a bigger guy, and stylistically he’s not going to be able to take him down and run around him like he has with other guys in the past, been out for a long time. [Bisping’s] a bigger guy who can scramble and probably out-box him. I see Bisping winning the fight. Then we’ll see if Bisping is a man of his word. He obviously hasn’t been so far to this date. If he’s going to fight a true contender, we’ll see what he’s going to do or run off into the sunset.