Michael Bisping understands why fans are talking trash about Jamahal Hill following the incident at the UFC Performance Institute, but ultimately, the former middleweight champion seems to be siding with Hill.
On his YouTube channel, Bisping created a video about Hill getting into it with multiple fans and fighters on the road to his fight with Jiri Prochazka at UFC 311 on Jan. 18. Bisping believes a lot of the vitriol spewed in Hill’s direction is in relation to Hill approaching Pereira at the PI, things getting a bit heated, and separated. Hill said following the run-in that he wasn’t going to put gloves on to fight Pereira “for free,” he’d rather do it in the octagon where he can make a lot of money.
Bisping reacted to the situation.
“Pereira threw the gloves at him and Jamahal was like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m not going to fight you here in the gym, I’m going to fight you and get paid for that,’” Bisping said. “Now, a lot of people’s opinions on social media is that Jamahal kind of bitched out, but I’ll be honest, I kind of agreed with his take. ...
“Why would you want to fight in the gym when you can get paid a ridiculous amount of money to fight for real? Although, on the flip side, I see why people say that as well. I see why they formed the opinion in that he kind of wimped out a little bit because he did approach him, and Pereira threw the gloves. They are in the gym, they could’ve trained, they could’ve done a round or two, but it would’ve gotten carried away. It would’ve escalated out of control, and somebody might have ended up getting hurt.”
Bisping also sees a lot of himself in Hill as a fighter with a massive chip of his shoulder, but maybe not using that chip in the right way.
Hill was brutally knocked out by Pereira in the main event of UFC 300, and the fight ended in a bizarre way after a low blow was essentially waved off by Pereira, then Hill threw a punch, and was immediately countered for the finishing flurry. Since then, Hill has not put himself in the good graces of the fan base — especially after saying he would make the fight look easy on multiple occasions in the build.
The now UFC color commentator and analyst understands why Hill is lashing out, but also hopes “Sweet Dreams” can mature along the way.
“Right now, Jamahal Hill, people are shitting on him, but the guy’s in fight mode,” Bisping said. “He’s fighting Jiri Prochazka [at UFC 311]. As well of the fact that he’s probably a little embarrassed, he’s a little bit annoyed, the fact that he has a reason he can say in his mind why Alex Pereira was able to catch him — I’m not saying there is a reason. What I’m saying is our egos as fighters make us believe that we can beat anybody on the planet in a fight, and when somebody interrupts the fight the way the referee did and then he gets clipped, ‘That’s what happened.’ ...
“That’s why Jamahal feels that way, and that’s why he wants another pop and that’s why a lot of people are going after him and talking a lot of shit. And then you combine it with he’s fighting Jiri Prochazka in under two weeks, who is a former champion himself, who’s got a very good shot at beating Jamahal Hill, let’s be honest. ... Jamahal Hill right now is under a tremendous amount of pressure because he wants to get back to winning ways, he wants to get another shot at Alex Pereira, he wants to prove to the world that ‘the reason I didn’t put those gloves on at the PI ie because I want to fight him in an octagon and I want to beat him fair and square, and I want to get paid.’”
