AUDIO | Michael Bisping and Georges St-Pierre agree to November fight

Earlier this year – to the distaste of seemingly everyone – former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre was pencilled in for a middleweight title shot against champ Michael Bisping, jumping a crowded line of established middleweight contenders in the process. This news generated a tidal wave of controversy and debate, but was ultimately rendered irrelevant, as St-Pierre, Bisping, and the UFC, couldn’t seem to agree on a date for the fight, and the UFC axed the plan altogether.

The promotion then went ahead with a Robert Whittaker vs. Yoel Romero interim middleweight title fight, which went down earlier this month in the main event of UFC 213. When Whittaker won this fight by decision, he was expected to be the next man to challenge Bisping, and normalcy seemed to be returning to the division. Unfortunately, news then surfaced that Whittaker will be sidelined with injuries until 2018, which once again opened the door for discussions of a St-Pierre vs. Bisping fight…

The talk continued on the latest episode of Bisping’s podcast, Believe You Me, when St-Pierre called in to confirm his interest in the fight, and angled for a November date.

“Sometimes in sports, unfortunately, the misfortune of people makes the good luck of others,” St-Pierre said on the podcast on Monday (h/t Abhinav Kini of IBTimes UK). That’s what happened in this case: I had an injury, you had an injury, which created the opportunity for another guy but the other guy, Robert Whittaker, had bad luck so he had an injury which put us back into the initial situation that we are in so it’s up to Dana White.”

“I texted Dana and he knows that I want to fight you and hopefully if the boss wants, the fight will happen.”

Bisping, of course, was completely receptive of St-Pierre’s comments.

“I look forward to fighting you,” Bisping replied. “Hopefully, we can make this happen. You want to fight me, I want to fight you. The interim champion [Whittaker] is sidelined – I don’t see a reason why this shouldn’t happen.”

After which St-Pierre concluded:

“Because of [Whittaker’s] misfortune, perhaps that’s put us right back in the initial situation that we were supposed to fight each other. Which I hope will happen, hopefully, November.”

Do you want to see Georges St-Pierre and Michael Bisping fight, or should the next title shot go to a more established middleweight contender?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/25/2017.