Report: Judge orders Bisping to pay former manager $400K
For Michael Bisping, 2018 can't come fast enough.
After losing his UFC middleweight title at the beginning of November and then suffering a brutal KO three weeks later, the 38-year-old has now been ordered by judge Richard Salter to pony up 320,000 British pounds - around $426,313 - in unpaid commissions to former manager Anthony McGann. The Manchester Evening News first reported the development Friday.
Salter reached the verdict following an 11-day trial, shortly after Bisping and McGann - founder of Wolfslair MMA Academy - got into a scuffle outside a Manchester courtroom. The money owed reportedly accounts for back pay McGann earned between 2005 and 2011.
The presiding judge didn't render a ruling without condemning both men's behavior during the ordeal, accusing Bisping of "tailoring and trimming his evidence to suit his case" and McGann of submitting evidence which "varied between the aggressive and the obsequious," according to the British outlet. Salter also deemed Bisping "a knowing participant with Mr. McGann in the scheme to defraud the Australian tax authorities by overstating Mr. Bisping’s expenses in 2010 and 2011." Bisping fought Wanderlei Silva and Jorge Rivera in Sydney in February of 2010 and 2011, respectively.
The court will now have to determine who will shoulder the legal costs of the dispute, with Salter claiming it would be an "affront to justice" should Bisping have to cover McGann's legal bills.
The UFC fixture - a Manchester native - recently stated his desire to call it a career on the UFC's March bill in London.