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The British fight game's next big thing?


The best-known British fighter in the United States isn’t Ricky Hatton. It isn’t Joe Calzaghe. It’s Michael Bisping. And he doesn’t even box.

That’s not quite true. Bisping does box. But he also kickboxes, wrestles and does jiu-jitsu. If you’re ever in a pub in Manchester and feel like picking a fight, count to three and think again. Michael Bisping might be in the house. And he’s got about 100 different ways of taking you down.

The 29-year-old mixed martial artist cannot claim to be the most famous fighter in Britain just yet, but it might not be long before he is.

Hatton and Calzaghe’s imminent retirements will leave a significant void in British boxing and it isn’t immediately obvious who’s going to fill it.

Less than a year ago Britain had seven world champions. Now it has just two: light-heavyweight king Calzaghe and Nicky Cook, the WBO super-featherweight champion from Romford.

London’s David Haye launches his assault on the heavyweight ranks next month and if he can knock a few big men over and land a world title fight, the media and the public will get behind him.

But he would be alone. Cook, despite being a tremendous professional, is about as low-profile as a British world champion can get. Carl Froch, who challenges for Calzaghe’s former WBC super-middleweight belt in December, has struggled to get the public recognition his talents deserve.

Perhaps his fight with Frenchman Jean Pascal on 6 December will help change that. But a crowd of 16,500 at the MEN Arena, as Bisping helped pull in last April for an Ultimate Fighting (UFC) show? Or seventeen thousand, as watched Bisping at London's O2 Arena last September?

I spar with pro boxers and more than hold my own. I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu with black belts and have no problem. Then I wrestle with top wrestlers and I beat them

Michael Bisping


Unless Nottingham's Froch beats Pascal while standing on his head with one arm tied behind his back, he’s not going to be drawing comparable crowds any time soon.

On Saturday, Bisping headlines a UK UFC show for the first time at Birmingham’s National Indoor Arena and will be watched by a 10,000 sell-out. And, while asserting that UFC and boxing can co-exist, Bisping believes his sport’s profile in this country can only get bigger.

“I've heard people say that boxing is something your dad might watch and UFC is something your kids might watch,” middleweight Bisping, who fights American Chris Leben in Birmingham, told BBC Sport.

“The demographic the UFC are hitting is the 18-35s and they are very aggressive in the way they market themselves and have huge aspirations. In the next five years or so all the big fighters in the UFC will be household names in the UK - and the rest of the world.

“The marketing people at UFC actually advertise the fights properly. You know when UFC are going to have a show and who'll be fighting. They have huge, elaborate websites, there are adverts on TV, in magazines, it's everywhere. But you can't say the same thing about boxing.

“I'm a big boxing fan, but [UFC president] Dana White is trying to learn from the mistakes that boxing's made. And boxing can probably learn a lot of things from UFC.


“On a UFC card, the five fights they have on pay-per-view, you can guarantee they're all stars and known to the fans. And the fights are matched evenly. There are no ‘gimme’ fights in UFC.”

Some boxing promoters, including Frank Warren, Britain’s biggest, have dismissed UFC as a threat, although Barry Hearn told the BBC that boxing has being “doing something wrong for some time” and that promoters cannot afford to “bury their heads in the sand”.

Indeed, pay-per-view figures reveal that while UFC is indeed outstripping boxing in the United States, boxing’s figures haven’t actually been affected, while it is WWE wrestling, which shares a similar target demographic to UFC, which has taken the biggest hit.

Still, Bisping believes Warren’s dismissal of UFC as a “novelty” and “a lot of fuss about nothing” betrays his fear of the burgeoning sport.

“Boxing promoters are going to call it a flash in the pan because they're looking at their bottom line,” said Bisping, a former British kickboxing champion whose ultimate aim is to become Britain’s first UFC title-holder.

“They're not going to advocate the sport and give it good press because they don't want people going off to watch UFC.”

Warren's negativity has not prevented UFC from creeping into the mainstream press. UFC gets twice as many hits on The Sun's website as boxing, while even 'quality' broadsheet The Telegraph now covers the sport.

As for those who say UFC amounts to little more than “rolling about on the floor”, although presumably not to Bisping’s face, Bisping says they have “no idea what they’re talking about”.

“If they came down and took a look at what we did then they'd soon change their mind. The discipline and respect you need to succeed in one martial art is well documented, and we have to excel in five different martial arts or Olympic sports.

“I spar on a daily basis with pro boxers and more than hold my own. I also do Brazilian jiu-jitsu with black belts and have no problem. Then I wrestle with top wrestlers and I beat them.

“I train three or four times a day some days. I do sprints, I lift a decent amount of weights. So for people to say we're just rolling around on the floor is frustrating.”

Not that Bisping is too bothered. And why would he be? There’s currently a 70ft poster of him overlooking New York’s Time Square and there’ll be a Michael Bisping action figure out in time for Christmas.

Not bad for an unassuming bloke from Clitheroe who, only a few years ago, was stuck in a cycle of "dead end jobs".

“It boggles the mind. I've got a 70ft bloody billboard in Time Square. It's crazy. As for the action figure, it's still got my chest hair on it and I've taken to shaving, so it's out of date already!

“But it's pretty cool and gives my mates a good reason to take the mickey out of me. They can give it to the dog to chew or something.”

What some of Britain’s top boxers might give to be chewed by a mate’s dog this Christmas.