Former UFC Champ Michael Bisping Recalls Stress of Vision Tests with Bad Eye

Going on to become an Ultimate Fighting Championship champion with one eye is a feat only Michael Bisping (30-9) has achieved and it wasn’t easy for the Brit in any aspect.

A perennially ranked middleweight contender, Bisping (30-9) took on Vitor Belfort in a title eliminator back in 2013. Bisping suffered a second round knockout loss that also left him with a retinal detachment and eventually loss of vision. The eye injury was not immediately detected and had worsened further by the time it was diagnosed.

It should be noted that Belfort is known to have been using testosterone replacement therapy until 2014, when the Nevada State Athletic Commission banned its approved use.

Despite doctors advising him to retire, Bisping continued fighting, hiding his eye injury the best he could for fear of losing his career. When Bisping went completely blind in the right eye, it was a huge challenge for him to pass the pre-fight tests for vision. While Bisping would scrape by most tests, he was still highly anxious until the day of the weigh-ins, when the state athletic commission does another vision test. Bisping recently revealed that he devised a code along with head coach Jason Parillo in case the doctor covered his good eye. Parillo would use specific gestures like coughs and yawns, based on the number of fingers the doctor put up, to convey the number to Bisping.

“I would pass tests somehow but even one site in the commission at the day of the weigh ins, they want to check your vision… The fight was the easy part. Because I was always terrified – I’m spending all this money on a training camp, I putting all this effort into it, I’m going to fly off to wherever it is and day before the fight I’m going to get pulled from the fight,” Bisping recently said on the Jaxxon podcast. “So the stress was major… The stress was insane. So anyway, me and [Jason] Parillo had a thing. I said, ‘Well if [the doctor] covers up the eye, go [coughs] for one finger, [Yawn] for two or whatever. We did that a couple of times.”

Despite being blind in the right eye, “The Count” went on to dethrone Luke Rockhold via knockout in a massive upset in 2016 in a fight that he took on 17 days’ notice. Bisping retired from the sport in 2018 with a 20-9 UFC record and now has a career with the promotion as a color commentator.