Georges St-Pierre is officially retired. The former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion closed the curtains on his combat career at a Thursday morning press conference inside the Bell Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
As expected, the retirement of Georges St-Pierre generated lots of interesting reactions on social media — most notably some messages of congratulations and well-wishes from a host of his fellow fighters.
See some of these messages below:
Of course, not everybody offered Georges St-Pierre messages of congratulations.
Ben Askren, one of the Canadian legend’s chief rivals, offered a different kind of message.
Georges St-Pierre last competed in late 2017, in the main event of UFC 217 in New York City. On that fateful night, he returned to the cage after a prolonged hiatus and submitted England’s Michael Bisping to claim the UFC middleweight belt. St-Pierre vacated that title shortly thereafter.
His next most recent fight occurred all the way back in November of 2013, when he defended the UFC welterweight belt for a ninth-consecutive time with a split decision triumph over the dangerous Johny Hendricks.
Over the course of his Hall of Fame worthy career, Georges St-Pierre has beaten names like Bisping, Hendricks, Nick Diaz, Carlos Condit, Jake Shields, Josh Koscheck (twice), Dan Hardy, Thiago Alves, BJ Penn (twice), Jon Fitch, Matt Serra, Matt Hughes (twice), Sean Sherk, and Frank Trigg.
“There’s no tears. I’m very happy to do it,” St-Pierre said in the English portion of his retirement message at Thursday’s press conference. “In combat sports you should retire on top, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m happy I have the discipline to do it.”
He retires with an impressive 26-2 overall record, and a reputation as one of the greatest fighters of all time.
This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 2/21/2019.