‘If I get in this car, I’m a dead man’: UFC legend Michael Bisping details potentially fatal robbery
Former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping detailed on his podcast a close call he had while on vacation in South Africa, in which he was cornered by a group of thugs in a late-night attempted robbery in Cape Town.
Speaking on his ‘Believe You Me’ podcast, the recent UFC Hall of Fame inductee said that he was accosted as returned to his hotel alone while visiting the city, in a situation which he says could have turned deadly.
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Bisping was returning from a late might meal in a local Chinese restaurant when he was set upon by several men as he attempted to locate his hotel.
“I get back, it’s like three o’ clock in the morning and the Uber driver drops me off at a four-way cross street not by my hotel, and he says ‘your hotel is over there’, so I get out the car and the Uber driver drives off and I don’t know which way to go,” Bisping said via BJPenn.com.
“All the while, I may have been stumbling slightly, and staring at my phone which is a giveaway. I’m on my apps, I’m stumbling around a little bit, and all of a sudden lo and behold, the freaks came out, the thieves came out, the muggers, the nasty f***king criminal bastards. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by 10 to 15 homeless people begging for money and then they started getting kind of nasty.”
It was at this point that Bisping became adopted a defensive stance, something which given his status as a former world champion fighter could have spelled disaster for the would-be thieves but the situation turned more hazardous when more men arrived in a car and began to gesture for him to get inside.
“At this point now, because my defenses are up, I’m trying to be big, just like a lion in the jungle puffs out his mane. I’m puffing out my chest and I’m trying to look as scary as possible so these motherf***ers don’t make a move.”
One of the assailants then told Bisping that if he wanted to make it home, he should hand over his wallet and get in the car. It was at this point that he says he became concerned for his life.
“If I get in this car, I’m a dead man, simple as that because they are gonna kill me or rob me and leave me for dead,” he said.
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“I’m backing up, there was a little opening and I just f***king ran. They didn’t chase much, and I ran down the street and low and behold there was my f***king hotel.
“Don’t ever tell me this town is not dangerous.”
Bisping retired from mixed martial arts in 2017 following two defeats in the span of four weeks to Georges St-Pierre in New York City and to Kelvin Gastelum in Shanghai. He is currently in Cape Town preparing to film a movie role.
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