Bisping was suffering from a rib injury before the bout, which is why he considered using lidocaine to help with the pain before facing GSP.
“I sneaked in a needle full of lidocaine, and I was going to, in the toilets, inject myself with lidocaine into the rib, which would numb the rib so I wouldn’t have any pain,” Bisping said to MMA Junkie. “Because it’s not a banned substance from USADA, I could have gone to the commission and said, ‘Hey, I want to inject myself with lidocaine.’ That wouldn’t have been the issue. But the fact that I had an injury, they might have pulled me from the fight. But then my doctor said, ‘You’ve got to be careful, because if you inject yourself with lidocaine in the rib and you get it slightly wrong, you could puncture your lung and die.’ So I had it all in the bag, and I was going to FaceTime my doctor, on the toilet while the commission members were outside, and he was going to talk me through injecting myself with lidocaine. But when I got there I’m like, ‘This is too much, bollocks to it.’ So I just went out there and fought injured. Everyone was saying, ‘You weren’t moving too well.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, no (expletive)!’ My ribs were seriously messed up!”
Lidocaine isn’t an illegal substance according to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which handles drug testing for the UFC.
The injured Bisping would make it into the third round against GSP before getting submitted and losing the middleweight strap. Bisping has since retired from professional MMA competition and was recently inducted into the UFC Hall Of Fame.
