Michael Bisping opens up on gym altercation with Uriah Hall

Several months ago, popular UFC middleweight Uriah Hall controversially stated in an interview before UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping’s first title defense against Dan Henderson at UFC 204 that he kicked the champ’s ass in training. Bisping, who of course went on to successfully defend his title against Dan Henderson, remained quiet regarding the situation for quite some time.

Now, ahead of Uriah Hall’s highly anticipated rematch with Gegard Mousasi this weekend, Bisping has opened up with his side of what occurred during the gym altercation.

He spoke on Sirius XM, saying:

“It was heavy sparring. In the middle of the mats it was a little bit lighter, that’s where people were tickling each other pretty much, that’s where the girls were sparring. Stuff like that. At the far end that’s where the deep water was, that’s where the sharks went swimming, and I’ll tell you this, fucking Uriah Hall never came down that end of the gym once. Not once.”

“One day we’re training, and he goes around and tells everybody that he kicked my ass in training. Here’s what happened. At the end of the training session I still felt like doing some work, everyone was finished, I said ‘Yo Uriah, you want to do something else?’ and he said ‘Yeah, sure.'”

The pair then agreed to do a wrestling drill, where one man attempts to hold the other down throughout the course of the 5 minute round, while the fighter on the bottom attempts to get back to their feet. When the fighter on bottom gets back to their feet, the men would reset, with one fighter on top, and the fighter on bottom attempting to get back to their feet.

“He starts on top of me, I get back to my feet like every 15, 20 seconds, something like that. He’s getting a little frustrated, then 5 minutes passes, we take a break, we go again, this time I’m pinning Uriah down. I’m holding him down, he can’t get back to his feet. He’s trying to get to the fence, I’m moving him away, pinning him down. I’ve done this shit for years, it’s no disrespect to him, I’ve just done this a long time. Eventually, it’s like 4 minutes 45 seconds on the round, the round’s almost done. He gets to his feet and I just kind of fall back to my side because the drill is he gets up and then he comes back down, and he starts unloading on me. Punching me in the face as hard as he can with the little MMA gloves on. So I’m like ‘woah, woah, woah, what the hell are you doing?’ I stand up and say ‘You’re a dick man, what the hell are you doing?’ he says ‘Well you know…’ I said ‘Listen, I’ll tell you what it is, you’re a bad training partner. Just because you got frustrated, you lost your temper. I said I’m never going to train with you ever again. You’re a bad training partner, go fuck yourself.’ and that was it.”