Luke Rockhold Says He’ll Retire if He Loses to Michael Bisping a Second Time

A trilogy fight between former UFC middleweight champions, Luke Rockhold and Michael Bisping isn’t even official and the two are talking like it is. And who knows, it very well may be some time soon. Both guys obviously have interest in it and it’s obviously one that Rockhold, who lost in their last encounter, would love to get back.

And Rockhold doesn’t happen to be lacking any confidence when it comes to another fight with “the Count”. When speaking with FloCombat recently, he went so far as to say he would even retire if he were to lose to Bisping again.

“I’ll put it on this: If Bisping beats me in this fight, I’ll be the motherf*cker who retires. If Bisping beats me in this fight, this will be my retirement fight.

I’d love to shut his mouth. If you’re going to run your mouth that much, if you’re a man, back it up. We will soon see. He’s opened his mouth, he said a lot of things and now he’s been backtracking a bit. Put your money where your mouth is. You want to f*cking run your mouth and say I was an easy fight, you say you can beat me up any time. Any f*cking time… Step in the cage and prove it. Let’s finish it.

Motherf*cker, you got knocked out two times in a row by 170 pounders. Don’t talk about my knockout to Yoel f*cking Romero. He’s been knocked out more than me if you want to get down to it.

This is your retirement fight, [so] let’s go out on the biggest stage possible. That’s Las Vegas. That’s International Fight Week. Back it up. Put your money where your mouth is. Put your balls on the table, ’cause I’m ready to go.”

The international fight week card that Rockhold is referring to is the UFC 226 card on July 7 that is headlined by his longtime AKA teammate, light heavyweight champion, Daniel Cormier who will be challenging for the heavyweight title by taking on Stipe Miocic.

Bisping and Rockhold first fought at UFC Fight Night 55 in 2014. Rockhold won the fight with relative ease and ended up getting the submission finish in the second round.

Fast forward to two years later and Rockhold is now the champion after defeating Chris Weidman. He and Weidman are set to rematch for the title in the main event of UFC 199 but Weidman is forced out of the bout with an injury just two weeks out. In steps Michael Bisping to shock the world with a first-round knockout.

Very few times if ever have we seen bad blood continue and spill over into a post-fight press conference the way that it did after UFC 199. It was as if the two were rebooked to fight again the next day and the fire is clearly still very hot in this rivalry.

Would you like to see this trilogy happen?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/7/2018