Michael Bisping didn’t invest too much time or energy in trying to figure out what the UFC’s drug tests did or did not prove about what was in Cung Le’s bloodstream when they fought at UFC Fight Night 48 in August. That’s for a couple of reasons, Bisping said.

For one, he found that he couldn’t make it more than a few paragraphs in any story about human growth hormone levels, lab accreditation or testing procedures before he’d “get bored” and move on to some other reading topic, he said.

For another, it didn’t seem important either way. He won the fight via fourth-round TKO, after all, so what does it matter even if Le did “get off on a technicality,” in Bisping’s words?

“If he was on some kind of enhancing drug, it only makes my performance seem better,” Bisping told MMAjunkie. “Now, of course, if I’d lost I would’ve been outraged and pissed off and all this kind of stuff. It would have been very different. But I didn’t lose.”

Not this time, anyway. But if you look at Bisping’s record, you see a career that’s arguably been altered more than any other by the ebb and flow of performance-enhancing drug policy in MMA over the years.

He fought no fewer than three opponents who were known users of synthetic testosterone, all of them covered under therapeutic-use exemptions for testosterone-replacement therapy, which has since been effectively banned in MMA and the UFC. He also fought at least a couple others who were strongly suspected of using banned substances, or who later failed drug tests for one substance or another.

Of Bisping’s six losses in the UFC, three came against TRT users. In two of those losses – first against Dan Henderson, then Vitor Belfort – he suffered violent knockout blows. They are still the only two knockout losses on his record.

Now, at 35, Bisping finds himself closer to the end of his career than the beginning, and he’s still yet to earn a UFC title shot. How can he not look back on all those fights and wonder how things might have turned out differently?

“I suppose if I really think about it and work myself up about it, yeah, I could do that,” Bisping said. “But realistically, I accepted those fights, and I knew what I was getting into. The way I see it, you’ve got to take it like a man. You dust yourself off, and you get back in there.”

That’s not to say that he doesn’t think the drugs might have made a difference. Bisping’s been a fighter long enough to know that there are plenty of days during a training camp – such as the one he’s enduring right now in preparation for his bout with Luke Rockhold at UFC Fight Night 55 on Nov. 7 – where a little extra testosterone would be nice.

“If people’s testosterone levels can be 10 times higher than what it normally is, of course that’s going to give you an edge,” Bisping said. “Like this morning, my body was sore because I’ve been training real hard, and my body just can’t do it. So I planned that today I’d take the morning off and do nothing, because I need to. Perhaps if I was taking testosterone or whatever medicine these guys took, I wouldn’t need to have taken this morning off. I would have recovered better and had more muscle mass and hit harder and run faster. Those things all help.”

They might have even helped his opponents, in one way or another, get a decisive edge on him.

Then again, even if that’s true, what is Bisping supposed to do with that information now? Whether his misfortune in getting matched up against testosterone users cost him career opportunities or not, it doesn’t do much to change the situation he finds himself in.

“Would things have been different? Yes, probably,” Bisping said. “Am I bitter about it? No, I’m not. I try to take it like a man, and get on with the rest of my life.”

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