There's been this weird turn of seeming opinion on Bisping since he won the title. It was like suddenly the deal with him went from the most often called out cocky douchebag that could manufacture a beef (he came off pretty respectful and like a decent human in the post-fight press conference. I would not be surprised at all if 95% of the shit he talks is just shit and he's actually an awesome dude) with a potted plant if it was announced they were going to fight, to deserving underdog who knocked out Luke Rockhold (who no one really likes, and was being a cocky douchebag himself before their second fight) on 11 days notice while filming a movie. Sure he wouldn't defend the title against an actual 185 contender, but who didn't want to see him try to avenge the Hendo KO/watch Hendo have his last fight against someone who probably wouldn't kill him. Stuff like that makes people forget eyepokes or tendency to call opponents faggots. I'm sure it helped the underrated image when people started pointing out Bisping was a dude who really only lost to guys who have popped for PEDs, too. Combine that with recent nostalgia for the glory days where there were no Reebok or USADA, Bisping won like TUF 3 or some shit about 12.5 million years ago, he's a piece of that, love him or hate him it's certainly a lot easier to cheer for someone you've heard of than some of the randos who have been making their way onto ppv main cards lately.
I think if you ran it back to an alternate timeline where GSP never retired, went up to middleweight for that Anderson Silva fight they teased with for years, won and stayed there, and eventually came face to face with Bisping, in that universe I would have not only cheered for GSP but actively cheered against Bisping. After the whole recent sorta Bisping image rehabilitation thing, I just wanted to see GSP not 1) look old 2) look out of shape 3) look small for the weight class 4) make us feel sad about a comeback story like he should have stayed retired. I definitely didn't feel like the fact that if he did win, he'd be beating up a guy who I'd particularly like to see get beat up--that was Garbrandt, I wanted to see him get his whole shit wrecked and I was very happy to see TJ take care of that job.
*after the first takedown where GSP didn't do much and Bisping did what Bisping does and got back up, think about how much more value takedowns held when GSP was king.
Otherwise though, how's NY? I miss pizza.
And now I'm sad cos all this other stuff made me forget JDS got popped too, and that reminded me (it's funny as hell tho).
