Michael Bisping has declared that the ball is in Jake Paul's court after finding an athletic commission willing to sanction a fight between the pair.
This is despite the former UFC middleweight champion being blind in one eye, as well as having severe knee problems and being retired from combat sport for almost half a decade. And Bisping himself has even admitted that he has minimal interest in the fight, even though he would be willing to take it to defeat Paul.
Paul stoked a war of words with Bisping last week when he listed the ex-UFC star among his six-main 'hit-list' ahead of his next boxing fight, expected to take place in August. The pair have gone back-and-forth with brutal insults, and now appear to have found a venue for the fight.
“He says that if I can get licensed, he will fight me," Bisping said of Paul on his podcast Believe You Me. "I don’t want to fight Jake Paul. I don’t. But guess what? I know a few people. I haven’t been around this fight game this long to not have contacts…
"I’m talking about the Grey Eagle Resort & Casino, the 7 Chiefs Sportsplex & Chief Jim Starlight Centre, Alberta Travel Tourism board. The Tsuut'ina Combat Sports Commission have messaged me and said 100 per cent that they would host that fight and they would commission me with one eye. So, Mr. Jake Paul… the ball’s in your court.”
The Sportsplex is a facility in Western Canada that falls under the Tsuut'ina nation jurisdiction. The venue holds around 2,000 fans, considerably smaller than Paul's last two major arena fights with Tyron Woodley, and is not known for staging boxing shows although they have the facilities.
Paul has previously said that if Bisping were able to find a commission that would licence him after years of cheating on eye tests during his later UFC career, the pair could fight, with the Brit earning a career-high $1million purse.
The deal would be double what he earned, at the base level, for his world title fight with Georges St-Pierre that headlined Madison Square Garden. The event sold something around 875,000 pay-per-view units, and likely saw Bisping earn much more than $1million, but he would also earn PPV points for a fight with Paul.
Would you watch a PPV fight between Jake Paul and Michael Bisping? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
"I would knock you out worse than Hendo," Paul said to Bisping in a tweet aimed at Bisping after he mocked his hit-list. "You’re an easy fight but show me you can get licensed and I will show you $1M plus PPV…"
The feud later got much stranger, with Paul declaring he wanted to eat Bisping's eyeball in an outlandish social media video. "When I was crying earlier, after he tweeted me, I was sobbing," Paul joked.
"I started to wipe my tears away with the $50million I made last year. With my last fight, by the time round three was over I'd made more money than he made in his whole career, so I get why he's mad; I'm the new kid on the block talking all this s***.
"Here are the two things I want to point out, a) Tyron Woodley was a five-time UFC champion and look what happened and b) Michael Bisping has paid me respect. Suspicious... so does this mean you respect me Michael? I think it does. You're swallowing your own words - I want to swallow your eye ball, pop that thing out for me daddy."
