Over the last few weeks, talks about a fight between GSP and Khabib Nurmagomedov have slowly been fizzling out of existence. Now St-Pierre essentially confirms their demise, but does say there are a few things which could change that.
Some fans have been calling for a fight between Georges St-Pierre and Khabib for some time now. This picked up in a big way after the Dagestani’s apparent talks of return, before Dana essentially shut things down.
That being said, Khabib somewhat disputed Dana’s words. He was seen in an interview saying that he had been messaging Georges through Instagram, but that the former two-division champ did not want to fight him.
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GSP Might Not Have Accepted A Khabib Offer
Speaking in a recent episode of Michael Bisping’s Believe You Me podcast, GSP was asked about the status of a fight between he and Khabib. He appeared to echo the sentiments of not wanting to fight, which Khabib indicated.
The French-Canadian legend says that he did want to fight Khabib for a long time. However now he is in a place where he may not have accepted the offer, even if he got one from the UFC, unless it was on his terms.
“I thought maybe (Khabib) would have called me out (after he beat Justin Gaethje), so it would have pressured the UFC into making the fight, but that doesn’t mean I would have accepted,” GSP said.
“Everybody seems like ‘Oh when’s it going to happen?’ it’s like, I never said I wanted to do it. It depends on the conditions too.
I would think about it seriously if the conditions were right, in terms of the weight class and all that. There’s no way I’m going to go down to 155 now. I’m 39 years old now, and that’s out of the window.”
From there, GSP explains that he may consider having the fight at some sort of open weight, with both fighters not having to cut. However he does think that Khabib outweighs him, even though he competes at lightweight.
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GSP Has Seen It All
The main issue that Georges St-Pierre is facing though, is finding the real motivation to put himself in a cage fight again. Sure, he gets the itch to compete while he is training, but when he gets back hime this feeling does not last.
“When I’m training in the gym, when I spar with the young guys that are getting ready for fights, I still get it. I feel I’m still in my prime because my knowledge increases, but perhaps my physicality slowly will at one point begin to diminish,” he said.
“So I still feel that I’m on the top of my game and I feel very confident and because of that, if you were to ask me the question right after a training session, I would say ‘Yeah, I want to compete again.’
“Then after I go home and I’m thinking about all that nonsense, and I’m like ‘Man, do I really need this s—t in my life?’ Because it’s a lot of drama, it’s a lot stress.”
GSP goes on to explain how he feels privileged to have had the opportunities MMA has given him. That being said, fighting is a hard thing to do, and he has been down the road enough that it would take something special to bring him back.
“If the UFC would want me back, it’s not me who would go and try to beg for a fight. ‘Hey, please can I come back, oh okay,’ and they’re going to low ball the s—t out of me. It would be the most stupid thing I could do.
“If they have an offer to make to me, an offer I can not refuse, they know where to find me.”
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What About Submission Grappling?
It is hard to argue with this perspective from GSP, but fans would still love to see these two greats compete with each other. So Georges was asked about the potential of some sort of grappling match.
Unfortunately he does not see this as a real possibility. He knows that he is not the best pure wrestler, so it would not make sense for him to remove striking from the equation against one of the best grapplers out there.
“I’m not the best wrestler in pure wrestling. I train with guys that are Olympic-level wrestling. I can hang there, but they’re superior than I am in their sport,” Georges St-Pierre said.
“So if we do submission grappling, I don’t think it would be a real reflection of how the fight would go. My strength is to mix it up with strikes.
“A lot of people say ‘Oh Georges is a great wrestler, that’s how he put his opponents down,’ but actually my capacity of closing the distance, I believe I got this from Karate…
“I won’t say that I’m not interested in doing something like this. I just think it’s very different than a real fight.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSyglKf7mZ0
If it turns out that a fight between GSP and Khabib Nurmagomedov is completely off the table, who do you think would have won?
