The grappling star Garry “The Lion Killer” Tonon believes that GSP can become the second man to submit the Michael Bisping on Saturday.
Garry is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt has been helping GSP to prepare for his super fight after the hiatus of some four years from sports for UFC 217 return to challenge the middleweight champ, Bisping.
Tonon also believes St-Pierre can become one of the few fighters to hold UFC titles in two different weight classes. Tonon told MMA Fighting:
“There’s definitely a good chance that you see Georges St Pierre submit Bisping, for sure.” “I don’t want to lead you into our plans and our strategies for the fight, I can’t give those details away, but is he capable of submitting Bisping? Absolutely. I’ll put it this way he’s far more capable of submitting Bisping than Bisping submitting Georges.”
Garry, who is helping out former UFC Welterweight Champion St-Pierre for his grappling for quite some time. He recalled his college times when he juggles college exams and helps out the welterweight champ in UFC to prepare for his fights.
“You know, I try to be as good as I can to Georges, and as dedicated as I can to hopefully, you know, I’ve been training with him in these camps, and it has obviously helped me, but hopefully in the future he’s willing to help me out on my MMA career and teach me some things he knows and help me a lot and give me some good advice.”
Let’s not forget that GSP did have a reputation for being one of the best grapplers in MMA before his time off from sports. However fighting with Bisping, who doesn’t know his grappling wonders.
“Georges is of the mentality, as well as John, that even if your opponent is not necessarily the best striker, the best grappler, or the best whatever the case may be, that these are the kind of guys that you want to bring in to challenge you in your camp, it just raises your level, you know,” Tonon explained. “One of the things that people strongly underestimate is like visualization and its role in improvement in any particular sport.
“Just being around people that are very good at what they do and watching them do what they do, feeling the way they move, I believe it raises your level. Even though he (Bisping) may not be the greatest grappler in the world, Georges may develop the grappling skills and abilities to use in the fight against Bisping. And he does that with everything, whether it’s boxing, kickboxing, he brings in the best guys in the world to challenge him during his camps, and I think it pays dividends.
“He told me something interesting once, and it stuck with me, and I try to carry it through in my jiu-jitsu career, even though I don’t make as much money. He’d rather spend money to win a fight than making money to lose a fight. Even when he didn’t have the money, he would always try to find a way to pay to get the best guys around him for his training camps; he invested in himself.”
Garry Tonon says GSP feels bigger during his training sessions as he is moving up to the 185-pound contest. He is as dangerous as he ever, can take down any opponent.
Tonon explained: “It’s fist fight.” “It’s something this guy has done for his entire life. Like sure, taking a couple of years off competition is always going to make you a little rusty in the competitive sense, but then again, this is what he’s done his whole life. It’s not like he’s branching into something new.
“The only new part about this is the opponent and the new weight class. So whether or not he’s going to be different when he comes back? I think of course he’ll be different. He’s just as tough to deal with in training as he ever was for any of the other fights, if not tougher. Over the years, I believe he’s developed his grappling skills even better than for the Nick Diaz fight. It’s been exciting seeing his progression because he only gets to work with us for a limited amount of time and the amount of improvement that he makes by the time he gets to grapple with us, it’s pretty exciting to see. I don’t know how it would be if he got to see us every single day, that would be scary. I think he could be one of the greatest grapplers of all time if he wanted to.”
Georges St-Pierre is taking on Michael Bisping for UFC Middleweight Championship at UFC 217 in the main event headliner.
Do you think Georges St-Pierre will submit Michael Bisping at UFC 217?
