Georges St. Pierre’s long journey back to the octagon has gone through a number of twists and turns. After being booked into a middleweight title fight against Michael Bisping, with no date set, it eventually came out that the fight couldn’t happen til fall. Then GSP let slip that he’d been injured all along, and that the UFC was fully aware.
The former welterweight champion and all-time great expanded on the subject on Tuesday’s edition of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, going more in depth into the injury situation, and letting slip that if things don’t go well, the comeback could be over awfully quick.
First, he went over his side of the debacle that has become the Bisping fight situation.
“The UFC knew as well that I couldn’t fight in the Summer, they knew that I had an eye injury. But we still did the press conference” St. Pierre explained. “I felt very uncomfortable during this whole time. As an athlete, I wanted to tell what was going on, but you know if you look at every sport, if you look at hockey for example, when an athlete is injured, he never mentions his injury, it’s always ‘he’s injured the upper body part’ or ‘lower body part’ or he doesn’t say anything at all, he’s got a cold. As an athlete, for people that don’t understand why we don’t want to talk about injury, it’s because this can be used against us.”
GSP went on to state that he had been advised by his agent not to discuss the injury, but that he wasn’t happy as the situation became more and more negative, and needed to get it off his chest.
“It’s a business. People cannot afford to wait months, and they have a family to feed and everything, so I wanted to come out and say [why he couldn’t fight to the fall].”
So what was the nature of the injury, which the former champ previously said was an eye injury, and how bad was it?
“It’s a long healing process. I had a surgery done. Everything is okay, it’s just there is a lapse of minimum time that I need to wait before I go back and train, especially if I take a risk to get hit on my eyes, because it can [do] damage” GSP explained. “My vision has not recovered 100% yet. It will be fine, everything is fine, it’s just I need to wait [the time] the doctor asked me to wait for. It’s in September I can start sparring again.”
So why, if St. Pierre was injured and the UFC knew full well, was a press conference with Michael Bisping and himself staged by the promotion? “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a contractual reason. I have no idea. Even my agent and I were not very excited about that.”
He elaborated, saying that “I think it’s the first time in history they announced a fight without a date. Because they couldn’t put a date yet, because we didn’t know. I didn’t know when I would be able to spar. I knew that the fight would definitely not happen in the Summer. I knew it would be during the year, but I didn’t know which month exactly when I could be back in competition.”
At the end of the day, “you don’t want to play with your eye. You don’t want to be blind. Health has always been my first priority.”
All that said, GSP told Helwani that the goal is still to fight Michael Bisping in the fall, whatever Dana White might say. He also understands the ire and callouts from other fighters, saying “I know I’m the target. The whole industry is going crazy. Conor is out now. There’s Conor McGregor, he’s a target, he’s the number one target because he’s the biggest draw, he makes the most PPVs. So everybody wants to fight Conor, everybody wants to fight Nate Diaz as well. Everybody wants to fight me, everybody wants to fight Nick Diaz. So I don’t take it personal.”
“It’s business” he added.
Why the fixation with Bisping? “It’s a win-win situation. It’s not only a win-win situation for the UFC, it’s a win-win situation for us.” The way he sees it, with Bisping comes the biggest reward, and history. “If I come back to fight anybody, I can lose big, but I win not as big as this. I try to come back to rewrite history, to get the biggest fight possible. And Michael Bisping to me right now is the guy that has the biggest stock.”
With so much time away from the sport, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for St. Pierre to lose, especially moving up in weight for the first time in his career. So what happens if Bisping gets the win?
“If I come back and I lose, this is it for me” GSP said. “If I come back and I lose, it’s finished.”
“I don’t want to hang there to become a punching bag for the younger people.” That said, St. Pierre has faith in himself. “I do not believe I’m going to lose, I think I’m at my best.”
