Michael Bisping is so much more than a trash-talking UFC analyst

Former UFC champion and current commentator Michael Bisping is stacking his poker chips one at a time and going all-in on fellow Englishman Tom Aspinall at UFC 295 in an interim heavyweight title fight against Sergei Pavlovich at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

“I honestly believe when he [Aspinall] takes him [Pavlovich] down, that’s it. It’s done. It’s over. He chokes him out,” Bisping told The Post in an exclusive interview.

Aspinall and Bisping, despite a 14-year age gap, have grown close over the past few years. The two grew up in towns less than 40 miles away from each other outside of Manchester.

During a wide-ranging, in-person interview with The Post, Bisping reveled in the opportunity to mentor Aspinall and many English-born fighters.

“I try to be,” Bisping said smiling. “I kind of do that a little bit, and it’s nice because of my commentary role. I’m still very much involved with the sport, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it because this sport gave me everything.”

While that same sport left him with one eye, a bad back, an aching neck and a lump in his wrist that may need surgery, he still wouldn’t change a thing.

His involvement in MMA is only growing even after he retired in 2018, helping launch UFC Gyms across the United Kingdom with hundreds of franchises.

Bisping also authored a massively successful book, “Quitters Never Win”, and his MMA YouTube channel has grown organically to 592,000 subscribers.

“The thing is, I think it’s [MMA] changing now. Back in the day, a lot of coaches had never done it. A lot of coaches have never been through this,” the 44-year-old Bisping said. “I’m not saying all coaches, and still to this day there’s a lot of fake coaches, a lot of pad men, a lot of ‘Yes Men.’

“It’s easy showing up to a fight. That’s the easy part. Walking out there in Madison Square Garden, 20,000 people, everyone’s screaming your name. You go out there, you win, you jump on top of the cage, you’re like this [flexing]. And then you get a big fat check afterward. That’s the easy part. The hard part is getting out of bed on a Wednesday morning when your body is falling apart.”

Fellow countryman and former UFC title challenger Darren Till knows the feeling of his body breaking down.

Despite the injuries, Bisping feels some sort of responsibility to help bring Till back atop the sport.

Darren Till’s murky MMA future

A close personal friend of Till, Bisping has a great vantage point of where he sees the remainder of Till’s career going — if anywhere.

“He wants to come back; the problem has been he has had a lot of issues with his knees,” Bisping explained of Till, who recently posted on X that he had begun selling clothes before deleting his account. “Everyone always gets on my case because I’m too much of a supporter of Darren because I have always said that he is championship material. Look at the fight with Robert Whittaker. Very, very close.”

Till fought and narrowly lost to the former champion Whittaker in July 2020. Many scored the fight for Till, including half of MMA media.

The 30-year-old former top prospect looked dominant during his run to a welterweight title shot, a loss against Tyron Woodley two years prior to his loss to Whittaker.

The fan favorite went on a bad string of losses after his failed title shot to Woodley, including three straight and five out of six.

Till has also battled injuries and notably went blind from dehydration during a scary weight cut that forced him to move up to middleweight.

“He took some time out,” Bisping said. “He’s released from the UFC. He’s having surgery and going to have those things cleaned up. He’s going to do some boxing fights in the meantime, hopefully earn some good money and knocking out a few YouTubers. But his goal firmly still is to come back to the UFC, and I think when he does, if he’s healthy, he can make a good run. Will he be champion? We’ll see.”

Till is still expected to have a boxing match with Bare Knuckle champion Mike Perry, Bisping said, although it doesn’t appear any official date has been announced.

The Jake Paul boxing match that never was

YouTubers are boxing now and it has taken off.

But Bisping could have slowed the hype train before it really began.

YouTube personality-turned-boxer Jake Paul and Bisping were once close to boxing each other before Paul eventually fought Ben Askren.

“He sent me an offer, Paradigm Sports Management, so I said to double it and see what he says,” Bisping said while laughing.

He never heard back about the contract offer, but his Instagram was flooded with “abuse,” as Bisping described it, from Paul.

“I have been on the receiving end of many, many DMs [from Paul],” Bisping said while taking his phone out and scrolling “on and on and on and on” through hundreds of messages from Paul.

“He gave me a little abuse. I gave him a little abuse back,” Bisping said.

Paul passed on fighting Bisping, likely due to medical concerns, while knocking out Askren in the first round.

Since then, he’s fought mostly MMA fighters in boxing and largely dominated them all, aside from a split-decision win over Tyron Woodley.

Had Bisping fought and beat Paul in his second career fight, we could be living in a much different combat sports world.

Now, Paul is preparing to fight in mixed martial arts, having signed a contract with the Professional Fighters League.

Paul is set to fight box pro-boxer Andre August on Friday, Dec. 15, and should fight in MMA in 2024.

“[He’s been] Cherry-picking these guys, I mean, what’s he going to do in the PFL? What’s he going to do? Do you know what he’s doing in boxing? In mixed martial arts, he’s going to fight a boxer. He’s going to fight a boxer that’s about 45 years old,” Bisping said.

Paddy Pimblett facing new challenges

Another fellow Brit is a budding UFC star Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett, who shot out of a cannon when he first came to the UFC, winning three straight fights by finish.

But an underwhelming performance, a controversial split-decision win against Jared “Flash” Gordon mixed with a strange beef with MMA Hour show host Ariel Helwani seemed to crater his momentum and popularity at least temporarily.

Pimblett is on record calling Helwani “a rodent” alongside a laughing UFC President Dana White, who has had an antagonistic relationship with Helwani for the better part of a decade.

The controversy stems from Pimblett requesting payment for interviews from Helwani and a string of comments immediately following.

Helwani responded by claiming that he helped promote Pimblett at the beginning of his career and that UFC fame and fortune have changed him.

Bisping has his own view of the entire saga that saw Pimblett resoundingly booed by fans in the octagon after his Dec. 10, 2022 victory over Jared Gordon.

“It’s not that I’m not friends with Ariel, but he’s gone off the deep end a little bit here, hasn’t he,” Bisping said of Helwani, who just got into a nearly hour-long screaming match with former UFC star Chael Sonnen.

“He just does whatever he can to criticize the UFC. You know what I mean? Because he doesn’t get credentialed anymore. So he finds an angle. As a person, I wish him well, but I’m not a fan of that.

“Ariel just likes to take a giant crap on all of their achievements. So, I’m not a fan of that as a guy. I’m sure he’s fine, and I wish him all the best. We’ve had a friendly relationship over the years, so I know he’s a good guy. But just lately, with that kind of angle, I’m not a fan of that.”

Pimblett and Helwani will likely not speak of ahead of Pimblett’s fight with Tony Ferguson, who recently hired ex-Navy Seal David Goggins to train him for the December bout.

Goggins is a well-known motivational speaker and physical trainer who believes that everything is mind over matter.

Something that Bisping can directly relate to.

Bisping was never the best athlete or grappler. He had power in his punches in his heyday and volume to his strikes but was far from the best at anything.

Through sheer grit, Bisping made it to the pinnacle of the UFC as a champion, beating the unbeatable Anderson “The Spider” Silva and giving Hall of Famer Georges St. Pierre all he could handle at Madison Square Garden six years ago.

St. Pierre submitted Bisping in a bloody battle between two UFC legends.

Now, Bisping hopes to have Aspinall right his wrong and get English fighters on board for a UFC title win at MSG.

His official prediction? A round-two submission for the Brit and a big win for Aspinall.