Michael Bisping has received a bout offer, but his loved ones don’t want him to take it

Having lost the UFC middleweight title to Georges St-Pierre, and come up short in an abrupt and ill-advised comeback fight against Kelvin Gastelum, former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping has been planning to retire when the UFC touches down in London this March 17.

Apparently, Bisping has now received a bout offer for this card, and while he’s tempted to accept it, his family and friends would prefer he just calls it a career now, and forgets about partaking in one last fight.

“There’s a fight in the works for myself, and I’ve got until the end of the day to tell the UFC whether or not I’m taking it,” Bisping explained on his podcast Believe You Me yesterday (h/t MMAFighting). “There’s an offer that’s been made to me, and all fairness to the UFC, I’ve been kind of taking my time to give them an answer so I’ve got until the end of the day to give them an answer.

“I’m just debating whether or not I take the fight. For me, whether or not those people can see, I have a bad eye. I have a bad eye and my wife doesn’t want me to continue fighting, and my manager doesn’t want me to continue fighting. I see out of that eye but not as well as I used to, and I’m still a young man so it’s kind of the reason I may hang the gloves up. My wife and manager and friends and people close to me say, ‘Mike, what do you want to do that for? You’ve done it. You’ve had the belt.’ I’ve done it. I’ve done what I set out to achieve.

“I kind of want to go do one last fight in England and they’re like, ‘So what? Five years from now or a year from now, people are gonna forget about all that and you can injure yourself even more.’ but you can injure yourself in any fight, whether or not you’re at 100% health or not. So that’s what we’re up to and I don’t know.”

Michael Bisping then explained why there’s a temptation to take another fight, against the wishes of his family.

“There’s the payday,” he said. “I’ve got some lawsuit bullsh*t that’s still going on. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but lawyers are very expensive. Also, one doesn’t want to go out on my last fight, that being the lasting impression on my MMA career. Also, I kind of feel that I owe it to the U.K. fans because they were so supportive throughout my career. I always envisioned in my mind having that retirement fight in London and there it is on a plate. I just need to take it but everyone around me is telling me not to.”

“I like the fight,” he added. “It’s not a case of the time or the opponent or anything like that. It’s either am I going to continue fighting or am I not? I promised my wife a long time ago that I was done fighting, promised a ton of people, but I still seem to be slogging on and doing it.

“Maybe we’ll have an announcement [today], maybe we won’t.”

Would you like to see Michael Bisping fight one last time?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 1/24/2018.