The Ariel Helwani-Michael Bisping feud has reached its fever pitch currently. Helwani started the second chapter after calling Bisping’s mockery of ‘investigative journalism‘ a mark of his ungratefulness. Helwani believes Bisping owes his UFC 199 opportunity to the 41-year-old’s desire to be a good journalist.
Michael ‘The Count’ Bisping’s life changed significantly after defeating Luke Rockhold at UFC 199 and claiming the middleweight championship. But Helwani has now disclosed how he was a major factor behind Bisping getting into that fight despite being nowhere in the picture.
Helwani’s investigative approach had informed Bisping about Dana White and Co. trying to replace an injured Chris Weidman with ‘Jacare’ Souza to fight Rockhold at UFC 199.
What followed was Bisping throwing his name “into the hat” after Helwani’s insistence which eventually resulted in ‘The Count’ fighting Rockhold on 5 June 2016 and winning the UFC middleweight gold.
Helwani mentioned that it was his investigative approach that helped Bisping get elevated to his current status as a UFC star.
“You’ve benefitted from my desire to be in the ‘know’. You’ve benefitted from my desire to be a good journalist. You got the fight [against Rockhold at UFC 199], you got the win, and your life changed forever.”
Ariel Helwani speaks on how he helped Michael Bisping get an opportunity to fight Luke Rockhold at UFC 199
#TheMMAHour @arielhelwani pic.twitter.com/ZJQwwfINiz
— FightCrack (@FightCrack) June 17, 2024
While Helwani is not in the wrong for defending his line of work, Bisping’s frustration with him is understandable since the MMA Hour podcast host was the first to claim the McGregor-Chandler fight at UFC 303 was off.
Ariel Helwani first to predict Conor McGregor comeback was off
The cancellation of the pre-UFC 303 press conference had several fans predicting that Conor McGregor would pull out of his UFC 303 main event encounter. But at that point in time, this was all rumors. That is until Ariel Helwani stoked some fire with news of the UFC trolling to find new matches for the main event.
To be fair to the scribe, back then, he was pretty positive about the actualization of the McGregor vs. Chandler encounter. But then the chairs moved and the song changed. The 41-year-old next update was about the fight being“in limbo” .
Helwani’s assertions came true when Dana White announced Alex Pereira vs. Jiri Prochazka for UFC 303 as a replacement for McGregor vs. Chandler. McGregor’s Twitter announcement then publicized then broke the fandom’s back.
