For the past couple weeks, most of the questions I’ve gotten over email, twitter, facebook and from buddies at the gym are some version of this? Is GSP going to fight, again? For the UFC? Is he a free-agent, or not?
My answer to all of those has, at the end, been I don’t know. The all-time great former welterweight champion wants to come out of retirement but says that negotiations fell apart between his team and the UFC’s new ownership.
For their part, the UFC’s new ownership (now, WME-IMG, a key business competitor with St-Pierre’s own CAA management) has laughably suggested that St-Pierre would need to be reintroduced to fans at a too-expensive cost for them. And, the UFC’s long-time president Dana White has continued to use his bully pulpit to smear the sport’s most popular fighter by saying he doesn’t possess the heart and desire to fight.
As if White knew anything about fighting heart or St-Pierre’s mind…
Now, St-Pierre’s side says the UFC has not kept up their end of his contract and so he is a free-agent. The UFC disagrees and claims they still have exclusive rights to promote the independent contractor.
So far, we don’t yet know if St-Pierre is just using the free-agency claim as a bargaining chip or if he truly intends to dig his heels in and fight for the long haul. Fellow legend Randy Couture knows what that is like, and he has said GSP is in for a long, expensive battle should he go that route.
Courts or arbiters may ultimately decide whether or not St-Pierre is, in fact, a free-agent. By the time that could happen, however, he could very well be another year or two older.
So, there’s truly no way, right now, of positing a decent guess for if St-Pierre will ever fight again. And, if he does, for who.
Amidst all that uncertainty, some interesting patterns have emerged. The UFC’s brass has long made a habit of talking out of different parts of their mouths to different fighting rivals.
When you hear one fighter saying they were told that a proposed opponent turned down a fight with them, they often cite the UFC itself as a source. Even when they don’t, the timing often seems to match up with UFC management like White advancing a similar narrative.
Coincidentally or not, that seems to be happening with St-Pierre, now. White has spent the past few years insulting St-Pierre, talking about what the fighter owes the promotion and fans and insisting that he knows that, deep-down, St-Pierre doesn’t have what it takes to fight, anymore.
A non-committal, fight-queasy and not fully-dedicated Georges St-Pierre is the image White would have fans hold of the TriStar competitor, despite nearly 15 years of professional work and current statements from the man himself, as evidence to the contrary. Still, White is suddenly not alone in casting aspersions on St-Pierre.
Middleweight title-holder Michael Bisping is suggesting that he committed to fight St-Pierre after negotiations but that Rush is unwilling to do battle. This is after former welterweight champ Robbie Lawler blasted St-Pierre and told him to keep his name out his mouth.
The timing of all that is worth noting, at least. The UFC often pits fighters against one another outside the cage, as well as inside it.
It is not beyond the UFC or any promoter, really, to explicitly tell one fighter something that may or may not be true, and another fighter something else. However, explicitness isn’t even always necessary for people to get the point.
The way societal and organizational cultures often work is that people within them can get the idea – consciously or not – of what may be expected of them from unspoken cues or barely perceived recognitions of what types of behavior is and is not rewarded by the power structure. For guys like Bisping and Lawler, coming out strong against St-Pierre at moments he and his team have mentioned them, would seem natural.
The fact that St-Pierre is also currently unwilling to do business with and is at odds with their bosses – the promotion that helps decide their fates – may just be a bonus. In such an instance, taking whatever they’ve been told and have heard from promoters at face-value would seem to benefit them – they can hit back at GSP for mentioning them, and send a clear signal that they also happen to be thinking of St-Pierre much in the same way that Dana White has been speaking of him.
The thing to understand is that none of what any of these three feuding fighters have said with regards to one another need be mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible that the UFC floated Lawler’s name to St-Pierre and the fight didn’t happen while at the same time, a waiting Lawler never even had the opportunity to accept the bout.
Similarly with Bisping – he could be perfectly willing to fight St-Pierre just as GSP could want to get a crack at his middleweight title. All that needs to happen for a fight between willing foes to fall apart, however, is for them to be individually bargaining with the promoter in secret, and one side can’t come to terms with the promoter on one matter or another.
When fighters only react to what they are told by their promoters, they are kept far apart and some of the more important, universal, issues of fighter rights and independence can be easily obscured.
All of the sudden, the discussion around Georges St-Pierre has become more about Bisping’s trash talk or Lawler’s retort, or White’s nonsense – and not about his grievances with his promoter or the serious conflicts the UFC’s new ownership represents by both managing and promoting fighters. That is a shame.
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About the author:
Elias Cepeda has served as a writer and editor covering mixed martial arts and combat sports, as well as public and cultural affairs, since 2005. He began as a staff writer for InsideFighting, and not long thereafter became publisher and editor of the page. Cepeda then went to write for Yahoo! Sports’ boxing and MMA pages, and edited their Cagewriter blog. He was hired away by FOX Sports, but after several years departed over philosophical differences with the executive leadership around important issues of journalism ethics. A student of and sometime competitor in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA since 1999, Elias brings a unique and vibrant presence to reporting and enjoys trying to highlight shared humanity and connect common experiences from seemingly different worlds.
