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Date: June 4, 2016

Event: UFC 199

If Michael Bisping were in the WWE, he would be looked at as one of the greatest Intercontinental Champions of all time. That may sound like high praise, but wrestling fans know how backhanded a compliment that is.

Over the last 20 years, the Intercontinental Championship has been a belt dedicated to keeping the second tier of superstars busy. It’s for the guys the promotion likes to have around and likes to have on cards, but not the ones that are legitimate top-guy material. It's a belt for the good ones...but not the great ones.

That’s the niche that Bisping fell into. Top billing on a cable TV Fight Night card? Sure. Pay-per-view co-main event? Absolutely. Actual title fight? Haha...no.

The fates and injury bugs eventually conspired to get him a title shot at UFC 199 opposite Luke Rockhold. It was supposed to be a feel-good moment. Not because he would win, of course. There was no way he was going to do that.

But hey, after 10 years in the UFC, he finally got a title shot. That’s something, right? Wrong.

In one of the greatest swerves in UFC history, he landed the hardest punch of his career on the biggest stage he’d ever been on against an opponent who mauled him just 19 months prior. Ten years and more than 20 fights into his UFC career, the brash Brit became one of the UFC’s most unlikely champions in one of the most absurd upsets in the promotion’s history.

-Steven Rondina