Welterweight great, former middleweight champion, and potential Greatest of All Time Georges St. Pierre has a couple of dates, and potential opponents, in mind for his UFC return.
Georges St. Pierre is interested in legacy fights, period. Which is why, despite being offered Nate Diaz for a bout in September, the Canadian dual-weight champion wasn’t interested. That, and he wouldn’t have time to prepare. But mainly, Diaz simply does nothing for his legacy, GSP said in a recent interview with Australia’s Submission Radio. And legacy is what matters most to ‘Rush’ at this point. Hence GSP eyeing the winner of Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
“The last time they [UFC] asked me, they asked me for fighting Nate Diaz in September, but I’m not ready in September,” St. Pierre told the program. “Not only that I’m not ready, I’m not very excited for fighting Nate Diaz. I need to find something that excites me.”
What excites GSP then, and when? The latter might be sooner than you think. “Novermber, yeah” he said of a potential New York return. “There’s also Toronto in December.”
As for who his return might be again, “what excites me is what can I have to improve my legacy, what can I do to improve my legacy. That’s the number one. And also the money. Legacy number one.”
“Nate Diaz’s legacy is not really an improvement for me, because people, they see me as a winner already,” St. Pierre added. “And if I win, they will say I look like a bully a little bit, because I beat his older brother. In terms of money, yeah it’s gonna be big money, because Nate Diaz is big name. I need to find guys that can help me improve legacy. Money as well. I’m at a point of my career now that I only have a few fights left if I decide to come back.”
“At forty years old I’m done, for sure,” he tacked on. “I’m not going to fight in a cage at forty years old.”
As for Anderson Silva, that’s off the table as well. “Not right now. This fight was interesting at a certain point when I had a lot of contenders in my division,” GSP said. “And this fight, if it would have been made, I want[ed] it to be made with extra performance enhancing drug testing. Which UFC was not a fan about it, because they didn’t want VADA to be part of it, before USADA was in. And also a catchweight. That was my thing.”
“Because as a fighter, it’s very hard to, if you’re an active fighter competing every few months, to go up down, up down,” the Canadian legend explained. “I didn’t want to do that.”
“Right now I don’t think it’s a good win-win situation for me,” he continued, “because I have a lot more to lose than to win fighting right now against Anderson Silva.”
So the winner of Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, then. “I would be interested in that fight. That’s a win-win situation,” GSP admitted. “It’s a legacy upgrade and it’s good money, it’s gonna be a big fight. Yeah. However, I fought at 170, I relinquished a title. I fought at 185, I relinquished a title. I don’t think UFC will let me fight for the title at 155. They will be afraid I relinquish and I left the division in ruins.”
St. Pierre, of course, has never fought at 155 pounds. And as he pointed out, Khabib, “in terms of size, he walks around at 195.” GSP himself is under 185lbs these days. Still, he said that “from my perspective, it’s a very winning situation. For UFC, it’s a big risk for them.”
“A title would be good for legacy, but even if it’s not for a title, it would be a big fight,” he’d add later. “It will still be legacy, maybe not as much as if it would be a title fight, but it still would be against a champion. We’ll see. We’ll see what’s going to happen.”
Whatever happens, it seems like Georges St. Pierre is ready to come back, again. And that’s very good news for the UFC, who recently announced the biggest fights of the year in Nate Diaz vs. Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov.
