Michael Bisping lashes out at Nate Marquardt, still wants Chael Sonnen bout

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Following Michael Bisping's victory over Jorge Rivera at UFC 127 in Australia, complete with an illegal knee and him spitting at Rivera's corner due to the pre-fight trash talk from Rivera and camp, Bisping found himself with no dearth of fighters looking to get a shot at him.

At the top of that list in the middleweight division where Chael Sonnen and Nate Marquardt, two fighters who have each had their shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship in their careers. However, while Bisping is really looking forward to a confrontation with Sonnen, he had some choice words in response to Marquardt calling him a "punk" and saying he wanted to "punch him in the mouth and shut him up."

"That guy, he's quite a hypocrite," Bisping said in an interview with Ariel Helwani at MMAFighting.com. "He's a steroid cheat, let's not forget that. He's had points taken away for illegally kneeing people himself, and then he goes out talking about me as if I'm Satan or something. The guy's an absolute hypocrite."

"He s***s the bed every time he's in a main event. He's had three No. 1 contender fights and a title shot and lost them all. I want to fight the top guys and I think Chael Sonnen for me is the biggest possible name I could get, and that's what I'm hoping for. Nate Marquardt doesn't excite me."

As far as Sonnen is concerned, Bisping echoed comments he made last week to ESPN UK's UFC podcast that he finds Sonnen's talk hysterical and wouldn't let it get to him like Rivera's did.

"I want to fight Chael Sonnen because No. 1, he's an amazing fighter," Bisping said. "When he fought last, he looked fantastic, and I want to challenge myself. He's the No. 2 ranked middleweight in the world. Obviously I can't fight No. 1 because he's got a title shot, so I want to fight the No. 2 guy."

"The things that Chael Sonnen comes out with, they're so outlandish that you can't help but laugh. Listen, I think he's brilliant. I've watched the stuff from his last fight. I was in stitches. I was laughing my ass off. Even comments he said about me after my last fight, I just had to laugh at that. You can't not laugh. Of course he's going to get in my head at the time, but hopefully I've learned from recent experiences. It'll make for a great fight i'm sure."

Penick's Analysis: Bisping feels he's surpassed Marquardt in the division and doesn't feel that fight does anything for him, so we're not likely to see the UFC even attempt to put that together, but again a fight with Sonnen seems to be a very likely possibility with both showing interest in it. As far as his comments on Marquardt, he's got a point about getting docked for illegal blows in fights, but Marquardt was also going off more about the spitting incident than the knee. Still, Bisping is ready to take on a bump in competition with the latest win, and for the UFC if he can get past Sonnen it would possibly put them in a position to give Bisping a title shot, and possibly in the U.K.

[Michael Bisping art by Cory Gould (C) MMATorch.com]

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