Georges St-Pierre was open to the idea of yet another comeback — just not in an MMA cage.
Widely considered one of the greatest fighters of all time, if not the greatest, St-Pierre is now 40-years old and hasn’t fought since his middleweight title capturing against Michael Bisping at UFC 217 in 2017. However, when boxing legend Oscar De La Hoya announced his comeback, “GSP” was looked at as the first opponent before the eventual Vitor Belfort matchup was finalized.
The Canadian likely would have gotten the described “fun” opportunity if it wasn’t for UFC President Dana White.
“I even called [former UFC owner] Lorenzo [Fertitta] to try to convince Dana,” St-Pierre said on MMA Fighting’s MMA Hour. “Lorenzo liked the idea, but Dana did not want it. I knew he hates Oscar but I said to him, ‘Listen, I’m going to make Oscar look bad because I’m in great shape. I’ve been staying in great shape the whole time and I’m going to do a full boxing training camp with Freddie Roach and his world champions there, so I’ll be very well prepared.’
“At first he says to me that the reason why he did not want it is because he thought that Oscar would basically destroy me in a boxing match. And I had some good arguments — I told him that I believe Oscar has more mileage than I do, he’s no longer in his prime, I stayed busy the whole time, I’m still in great shape, I’m going to be very well prepared and I’m taking this fight very seriously. If I do it, because it’s my name — my image is attached to it — I will do it 100 percent. And I told Dana, I said, ‘If there’s one MMA fighter that go to boxing and look good in this situation, it would be me.’”
If there was ever an MMA fight to bring Georges St-Pierre back one more time, it was widely known to be the potential meeting with lightweight legend, Khabib Nurmagomedov. White was aware of that along with both parties’ interests. The timing was just off by this point.
“And at first he refused,” St-Pierre continued. “Then he thought about it but he came back with the argument that, oh, no, it’s not because he thinks Oscar is going to win; he thinks it’s because he doesn’t like the fact that Triller takes me and makes money off my back while I’m still under contract with UFC. So what Dana says — listen to this — then he came back and he asked me if I wanted to fight Khabib. And I told Dana, I said, ‘That’s very strange. Why didn’t you want to do the fight when we asked you a few years ago? Why is it now?’ He said, ‘Yeah, because Khabib was not retired and he was not the same guy that he was. Now it all makes sense.’ So I didn’t want to, but I was curious to see what would’ve happened, so I said to him, ‘I’m going to think about it,’ and I waited.
“Turns out that, shortly after, I saw in the media people saying that, oh, now Khabib, he doesn’t want to fight me because I asked for the fight with Khabib. I never asked for the fight with Khabib. It’s Dana White that probably went to Khabib and [his manager] Ali Abdelaziz and told them that Georges wants to fight Khabib. We asked a long time ago, but I didn’t ask again. I didn’t beg for that fight again. We’re both retired and I’m good.”