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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
There's been a lot of back and forth the last several months between Michael Bisping and Tim Kennedy, but a fight hasn't yet come to fruition. Both fighters seem more than willing to fight one another, but it's a matter of whether or not the UFC wants to put it together.
For Bisping, who holds little to no respect for Kennedy at this stage, said this week that the UFC is having to figure out whether or not to "waste" one of his fights on Kennedy.
"I've fought the best athletes in the world, and some on short notice. If Tim Kennedy thinks he's going to be the person I'm scared of - this is the person that dresses up as a f***ing ballerina - he's crazy," Bisping said in an interview with BloodyElbow.com "He dresses like a woman on a regular basis just to get a bit of attention. It's just embarrassing. And for the record, I have many times spoken to Joe Silva and Dana White and said, 'Listen, let me shut this guy up once and for all.' It comes down to their decision. He keeps going on like it's me, and that I have the ultimate say so."
"That decision basically comes down to Joe Silva, and they're trying to decide if I should waste one of my fight opportunities on a fighter of sub-par caliber," he continued. "They are weighing their options on whether it makes more sense to match me up with a better fighter to make the company more money, or if they should just let me get in there and beat the s*** out of him for my own personal satisfaction. I'm hoping they go with the latter, and I get to beat the s*** out of him on national TV."
"He's not going to get me a title shot or anything, but I think he might be on the fringe of the Top 10, and he's been on a tirade about me for quite a while now. I'm just sick of it now. I'm sick of trying to do the witty thing on Twitter. I just want to fight the guy now. I've never met him, nor said anything about him, but he's just made a bee line for me. Enough is enough now. I know I can wipe the floor with him, and that's what I'm going to do. He hasn't got a clue what's coming to him. This guy... I'm going out there to embarrass him, plain and simple."
Penick's Analysis: Kennedy's fought some high level competition in his career, and given one of those fights was with Jacare Souza I think you can say he's fought a fighter at a higher level than Bisping. But the Brit doesn't take kindly to anyone trash talking him, which has led to this in the first place. That said, he's not wrong about the option in front of the UFC. There's probably more money to be made for them by Bisping fighting a larger name than Kennedy, just because he's been around for a long time and has built his own name up over the years. Still, with all the talking between the two, it only makes sense to let things be settled in the cage.
[Michael Bisping art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_19825.shtml
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