Michael Bisping has fully buried the hatchet with Luke Rockhold, and wishes him well in his retirement.
This past weekend, Rockhold returned after a three-year layoff to take on Paulo Costa in the co-main event of UFC 278. Rockhold came up short that night, losing a unanimous decision in a hard-fought battle and afterwards, the former UFC middleweight champion announced his retirement from MMA, saying he is âf****** oldâ. And while I one point in time, he and Rockhold were the bitterest of rivals, Michael Bisping has nothing but respect for Rockhold as he steps away from the sport.
âI wish you all the best in retirement, Luke. I really, really do mean that,â Bisping said on his YouTube channel. âI know we had some back and forths over the years, but it was just competitive. Just rivals, sporting rivals. Iâm sure if we met under different circumstances â in fact, I always said this â Iâm sure weâd get along. Weâve got some mutual friends and Jason Parillo thinks the world of you as well. So congratulations in what you do.â
Bisping and Rockhold were heated enemies for much of Rockholdâs time with the UFC. The two fought twice, with Rockhold winning the first bout in dominant fashion, but Bisping getting the last laugh by knocking out Rockhold at UFC 199 to win the middleweight title. That KO would end up signaling the decline of Rockholdâs career as he only won once more before his retirement at UFC 278, a retirement that Bisping says was even emotional for him to watch.
âItâs weird because he was always a guy who was kind of subject to a lot of ridicule,â Bisping said. âAnd I know I didnât help a lot of stuff with the âConceive, believe, achieveâ thing and I kind of turned him into a little bit of a meme, but thatâs what you do. When youâre fighting each other, you make fun of one another. Then obviously he was always âa little bit arrogant,â but you need that. You have to be arrogant as a fighter. Youâre stepping foot into an octagon, in front of 20,000 people, with the entire world watching. Believe it or not, you have to have some self-belief and you have to have confidence. So that was always the issue there. Maybe he was a little misunderstood, maybe some of the things didnât come out the right way, but Saturday night, when the fight was done, when the dust was settled, we saw from Luke Rockhold a look into him. He pulled back the curtain, you got to see the real Luke, and he was very emotional, and rightly so.
âYou go in there into the octagon, you put your heart and soul into it, you try your god damn best, and you come up short, itâs not enough. I thought it was really real, I thought it was honest. It was emotional. It was, seeing him like that, getting upset. Iâve been there myself. I remember when I fought Anderson Silva, I was in tears after that because you pour so much into it. Itâs not just a physical thing, itâs a mental thing, itâs an emotional thing. Youâre fighting for your life, kind of, in there. Of course youâre not going to die. The refereeâs going to step in, but it feels like that. Itâs so visceral and animalistic. You are emptying the tank that you have in every single way possible. And thatâs why we saw him the way it was.â
In recent years, Bisping and Rockhold squashed their beef and even did some light work together, and while the two may not be bosom buddies, Bisping has a tremendous amount of respect for what Rockhold accomplished in the sport and who he was as a fighter.
âLuke, I do believe is underappreciated by a lot of people,â Bisping said. âThe run that he had, the career that he had, Strikeforce champion, UFC champion, always a top contender, always in big fights, always took on the best challenges. I mean look at that, he just came back after three years of being away and took on Paulo Costa, one of the toughest guys in the division, one of the top guys, one of the hardest hitting and one of the hardest hitting with the best chins. Thereâs not a lot of people queueing up to take on that guy when theyâve been out of the octagon for three yearsâŚ
âTo go out there and lose three of your last four, all by knockout, to then go and take three years away from the sport and come back and go right in, co-main event, in a pay-per-view, against Paulo Costa, an absolute killer, that tells you the measure of the man. That tells you what the man is made of and what he thinks of himself and the kind of challenges and risks heâs willing to takeâŚ
âSo Luke, whatever youâre going to do in retirement, mate, enjoy. You had a fantastic career. I think people still donât give him the credit that he was due, but I do.â
To go out there and lose three of your last four, all by knockout,
Bisping canât help getting a jab in there 
It was a fun rivalry. Late career respectful Bisping has been a blast.
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