Michael Bisping, Katlyn Chookagian and the $177 Bar Tab
Michael Bisping and Katlyn Chookagian are well known in the MMA community and for obvious reasons.
Bisping is a UFC legend, who won the middleweight championship in 2016 and was a huge fan favorite due to his incredible skills on the microphone. Aside from fighting, he also host a highly successful podcast called Believe You Me and he has been a UFC analyst for a number years, first with FOX and now with ESPN. Following his fighting career, Bisping was inducted in the UFC Hall of Fame and for good reason.
Chookagian is currently one of the best flyweights in the world and sits at No. 2 in the official UFC flyweight rankings. She previously fought current women’s pound-for-pound No. 1 fighter and the reigning flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko and she is knocking on the door of getting a rematch with her. On Saturday, Chookagian will fight fellow former title challenger Jennifer Maia at UFC Vegas 46, which is the first UFC event of 2022.
While all of that is obvious to the MMA community, here’s something that may have slipped through the cracks.
In 2019, Bisping was in Brooklyn, New York for a UFC event and he attended a local bar the day before the event. Also at the same bar was Chookagian, who was with her husband. The two and had a nice interaction and went their separate ways. However there was some confusion afterwards.
Following the meeting at the bar, Bisping went on his podcast and said Chookagian left and when he closed out his tab, the total was 177 dollars due to Chookagian and her husband’s drinks being left on his tab.
A few months later, I was working at a UFC event in Philadelphia with SSPTV News, which is a local news station located in Hazleton, PA. Chookagian was at the event and did a media scrum and I asked her about the situation and her side is much different.
Chookagian claims that Bisping had a few too many drinks and forgot that he wouldn’t let them pay and insisting on picking up the check.
Now, a few years later, the story was revisited one more time. Recently, Bisping spoke with MyMMANews about his role in the new film Never Back Down: Revolt. Since I previously asked Chookagian about the situation, I had to ask Bisping about it.
He got a good laugh out of it and admitted that his comments on the podcast were all in good fun and that he was just making a joke of the situation.
MyMMANews is now presenting all three interactions in which the conversation about the 177 dollar bar tap was brought up. To hear all three comments about the infamous bar tab, watch the video above.
