Michael Bisping still doesn't remember being KO'd by Dan Henderson
If there's one thing you can say about UFC middleweight Michael Bisping, it's that he's brutally honest about anything that's ever asked of him – even one of the hardest moments he's ever gone through in his career.
Bisping was a part of The Ultimate Fighter season 9 when he coached opposite Dan Henderson pitting a team of British fighters against a squad of Americans. While Bisping himself had been a competitor during season three of the show and embraced a villainous role following his entrance into the UFC, The Ultimate Fighter just amplified everyone's negative feelings about the brash Brit.
So as he stepped into his fight against Henderson at UFC 100, the crowds of people rooting against Bisping were by far the majority watching the event live and at home on pay-per-view. The end result of the fight was literally worst-case scenario for Bisping as he not only lost to Henderson, but he suffered one of the nastiest knockouts in the history of mixed martial arts.
"I fought Dan Henderson in 2009 and I lost and that was at UFC 100 – UFC 100 was the biggest pay-per-view the company's ever done. 1.6 million pay-per-view buys, watched all over the world, and of course I get knocked out cold after talking lots of smack leading up to the fight. So I got my just desserts in that one," Bisping told BT Sport in England during recent interview.
The knockout still gets shown in just about every UFC highlight reel that airs to this day so it's a constant reminder of how humbling a loss can be and Bisping never forgets that moment. Actually watching the video is the only way he can remember the knockout because following the fight he didn't even know he had taken on Henderson that night.
Bisping revealed that after suffering the knockout, his memory was so disheveled that he had no clue he fought Henderson much less lost by knockout.
"After the fight, I don't remember anything. I remember being in the showers and I didn't have a clue what was going on," Bisping stated. "I was saying to my manager at the time, 'I can't be knocked out cause I'm not fighting for another two months, what the hell are you talking about?' and then these people come and go 'Michael we need to take you to the hospital'. I'm like I'm not going to the hospital and then I'd say again, 'what's going on', I'd just keep repeating myself."
In the Octagon, Bisping had to be told repeatedly by cut man Jacob 'Stitch' Duran that he was knocked out in the fight, but even in that moment he has no actual memory of the conversation taking place. What Bisping thought had happened was almost a dreamlike state where he believed he was attending the event along with one of his teammates and was asked to step in and compete last minute.
Bisping definitely does not remember this part.
It took Bisping a trip to the hospital and a whole lot of people around him explaining what had just happened before he finally accepted the knockout actually took place.
"In my mind I thought I had somehow been convinced, I thought I was there to corner somebody, and I had been convinced to step in on short notice to fight," Bisping said. "That's what was going on in my head. I was like 'why have I fought tonight? I'm not supposed to fight for another two months!'.
"Eventually they coerced me into the ambulance and we're rolling to the hospital and after a while it kind of dawned on me."
The Bisping knockout courtesy of Henderson may live in infamy as one of the best knockouts to ever happen, but at least the British fighter still has no first hand memory of it ever taking place.
