Michael Bisping has settled his ranking of the rival coaches he faced on The Ultimate Fighter, and Jason 'Mayhem' Miller came out on top for the wrong reason. The former UFC champion said Miller was the most annoying of the three, putting him ahead of Dan Henderson and Daniel Cormier in a blunt retrospective on his years in the coach's chair.
The timing fits because Bisping's comments come after three seasons of coaching on the show, including season three, which he won, and later turns opposite Henderson, Miller and Cormier. For readers searching his name now, the comparison is the point: Bisping was not revisiting a fight card so much as putting a label on the personalities he spent months around, one by one.
Henderson, who coached Team U.S. against Bisping's Team United Kingdom in 2009, drew almost no criticism at all. Bisping said Henderson was not annoying and described him as level-headed, the kind of opponent who did not spend extra energy getting under his skin. That matters because it sets the floor for the rest of the ranking. If Henderson barely registered as a nuisance, Miller had to do something more than simply talk loudly to stand out.
Bisping's praise for Cormier made the contrast sharper. He called Cormier awesome and said he was the man, while also noting that the two were friends, retired and in different weight classes when they coached opposite each other. That meant the usual coach-vs.-coach feud never fully turned into a true collision course. Miller, by comparison, was the one Bisping said he could not wait to fight, even though he later beat him by TKO. Henderson got the same post-show treatment and lost to Bisping by KO, but Bisping still did not place him in Miller's category for irritation.
What Bisping was really describing was duration as much as attitude. He said the show had elite talent, including a four-time jiu-jitsu world champion, incredible wrestlers from other parts of the world and strong strikers, with some fighters having done MMA since they were six or seven years old. In that kind of pressure cooker, a coach who keeps things steady can vanish into the background while a more restless presence takes over the room. That is why Miller, not Henderson or Cormier, landed as the most annoying rival in Bisping's memory.
There is no next bout attached to this ranking. The season is done, the fights are long over and Bisping's view of the three men has already hardened into a verdict: Henderson was harmless, Cormier was a friend, and Miller was the one who got under his skin enough to make him want the fight most.
