Recent rumors have circulated regarding Michael Bisping and Jorge Rivera’s upcoming battle set to take place at UFC 127 on February 27th in Australia. One of the rumors was that Bisping had a severe case of staph-infection in his arm. The rumor turned out to be true and Bisping admittedly was almost forced to pull out of the fight because of it. However, “The Count” wanted to clear the air and explain things from the source. Here is what he told ESPN:
"It was something I picked up in October and then it flared up again at the start of camp. The first couple of weeks it was really bothering me, and I couldn't really use my arm at one point. My manager did say to me, 'maybe you're gonna have to pull out of the fight', but we still had time. Fortunately the antibiotics have cleared it all up and now the arm's great. My manager was saying, 'you're doing great, hopefully we're on our way to a title shot, so you don't want to derail anything'. He wasn't saying, 'let's pull out', but he was saying that I should think about it. But we still had plenty of time and it cleared up."
Bisping is lucky that the staph-infection has cleared, because he is indeed working his way back up the middleweight ladder after winning his last two fights, and if he were to pull out of his next fight it would surely derail his plans to continue that climb.