White on Bisping’s fake eye: ‘I don’t think he duped anybody’
After video surfaced of Michael Bisping removing his false eye, UFC president Dana White wants to make it clear that – whatever his condition may have been – he doesn’t think the ‘Count’ fooled doctors for a second.
One of the wilder MMA stories to hit the front page in recent memory comes from former champion Michael Bisping. Recently, while filming a podcast interview, the ‘Count’ revealed that his right eye was not merely damaged – as had been reported in the past – but ruined to the point that he wore a false eye cover over it. Moreover, the eye had been essentially sightless for the last few fights of his pro career.
In an impromptu interview with TMZ, he elaborated on the claim, telling the outlet, “Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it. All you gotta worry about is that I won the belt. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.”
“What does it look like? It looks good. Boom, there you go,” Bisping responded when pressed for more details—adding that he wouldn’t be taking it out in public again.
To back it up, if Bisping was in fact suggesting that he fought with his fake eye inserted, UFC president Dana White agrees that he probably did.
“Yeah, I think he did,” White told TMZ in a video interview. “He cleared medicals and he had that surgery and had that problem with his eye. And you would never know it. The guy, aside from popping his eyeball out of his head, you would never know that Michael Bisping has an issue. But, before he got the surgery, his eye used to point inward. Got it fixed and, yeah.”
“I have no clue,” White responded when asked when Bisping got the fake eye.
And when asked if White thought Bisping actually fooled medical personnel in order to get cleared, the UFC president was much more skeptical. “No, you aren’t duping the doctor. I mean, the doctors look into your eyes. Listen, I hope the doctor would know the difference between a real eyeball and a fake eyeball. So yeah, I don’t think he duped anybody.”
Whether it’s better to suggest that fight doctors are easily fooled, or that they’re just willing to license anyone regardless of their condition is a tough problem to unravel. But, that appears to be where Bisping’s prosthetic eye has left us.