Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping will become the latest fighter to attempt to retire, announcing his intentions on his podcast Monday.<\/p>\n
Bisping said that health is a driving factor as he started seeing flashes in his left eye after a knockout loss to Kelvin Gastelum late last year. He was diagnosed with a\u00a0vitreous detachment which he said puts him at risk for a detached retina, the same injury he suffered in his right eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said he was still planning on fighting Rashad Evans in London this month, but after watching a movie about a fighter who suffers major injuries and health declines when he refuses to stop fighting, he decided to call it a career.<\/p>\n
Best known for being a great promo and essentially an MMA heel during the boom period of the UFC, the 39-year-old finally reached the mountaintop in June 2016 by knocking out then-champion Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 to capture his first and only UFC title.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That fight came in a stretch in which he defeated Anderson Silva, Rockhold, and Dan Henderson before losing the belt to the returning Georges St. Pierre at UFC 217 last November. He made an ill-advised return just three weeks later against Gastelum in Shanghai and lost via first round knockout.<\/p>\n
He finishes up his pro career at 30-9, having started in 2004. He made it to the UFC in 2006 as part of the TUF 3 cast and moved to middleweight after a handful of fights at light heavyweight. Including the names above, Bisping fought a who’s who including Evans, Wanderlei Silva, Brian Stann, Chael Sonnen, Vitor Belfort, and Chris Leben.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping will become the latest fighter to attempt to retire, announcing his intentions on his podcast Monday. Bisping said that health is a driving factor as he started seeing flashes in his left eye after a knockout loss to Kelvin Gastelum late last year. He was diagnosed with a\u00a0vitreous detachment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}