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Michael Bisping rips Chris Weidman for 'Oscar-winning performance' against Gegard Mousasi
Michael Bisping promises he doesn't always try to take shots at Chris Weidman, but he's also not going to hold his tongue when asked for an opinion.
The most recent incident where the current middleweight champion addressed Weidman came after the controversial ending to the co-main event at UFC 210 this past weekend in Buffalo.
Weidman lost his fight to Gegard Mousasi following a pair of knee strikes that were originally deemed illegal before the referee reversed the decision after being advised that both landed within the unified rules of mixed martial arts. By this point, Weidman was already down on the ground, stunned from the strikes and upon the doctor's advice, he was deemed medically unfit to continue.
Looking back at the fight, Bisping says Weidman has no one to blame for the loss but himself because he believes the New York native was trying to game the system and milk a five minute rest period but ended up getting himself put out of the fight while pretending to be hurt worse than he really was.
"It appeared, initially, that it was two illegal strikes. So Weidman thought he had five minutes. But come on, man, talk about an Oscar-winning performance," Bisping said on his podcast, "Believe You Me" this week. "He was laying it on thick. He thought he had five minutes but he was kind of like rolling around on the floor, clutching his head. He was putting on a real performance here. He even rolled back from being on his knees on his backside.
“Now what happened was with the benefit of slo-mo replay, they go hold on a minute because those knees were legal. Now because he was acting so hurt and so injured, the commission said, ‘no, you’re not continuing to fight,’ so they called it a TKO. Now, I don’t know if that was the right decision, but Weidman was trying to win via a disqualification or, at the very most, trying to get a point deducted from Mousasi.”
Warning Explicit Language
Bisping compared Weidman's plight to a similar circumstance he faced during his fight with Anderson Silva last year.
During a crucial third round in a main event fight, Bisping lost his mouthpiece and pointed at it while trying to get the referee's attention to pause the action so he could place it back in his mouth. The referee didn't comply and Silva went on the attack before blasting Bisping with a knee that very nearly caused a stop to the contest.
Bisping was able to get up off the mat and somehow recovered between rounds before earning a unanimous decision over Silva in the end. Bisping says Weidman should have taken a similar approach when Mousasi nailed him with those knees rather than staying on the ground and appearing to be injured while waiting for the referee to make a judgment call.
"Weidman put on a performance. He rolled around on the floor. He clutched his head like a six-year-old that bangs his head and wants a Band-Aid from his mommy! He was holding his head like a little kid! ‘Mommy, mommy, I’ve hurt my head.’ And then he tumbles back onto his backside and he’s rolling around on the floor looking so sorry for himself," Bisping said.
“I fought Anderson Silva. At the end of the third round, my mouthpiece came out, he dives up in the air, knees me in the face, opens stitches all over my face — I needed about 20 stitches in my face — I’m on the floor, as he kneed me, the buzzer went. Did I roll around on the floor going ‘mommy, mommy, please help.’ No! I got up, wiped the blood off my face, stuck my mouthpiece in, took a breath, had a sip of water, then went back out and fought. I didn’t roll around like a little [expletive] on the floor hoping that the commission would give me a win by default. That’s what he did!"
