UFC welterweight G.O.A.T. and new middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre took part recently in a media call and said he is contractually obligated to fight interim champ Robert Whittaker.
There’s going to be news about it in the next few weeks, but I don’t plan to hold the title and not defend it, said St-Pierre, as transcribed by Steven Marrocco for MMAjunkie.
He also revealed that he was injured when Bisping threw an elbow from bottom mount that impacted the back of the head.
It looked very insignificant when it happened, said St-Pierre. It wasn’t the strength of the hit. It was more the precision of it. It’s not his fault. We’re not allowed to hit there, but it was just in the heat of the fight, and it’s normal.
My neck was so inflamed, when I was on the floor, I had a hard time posturing up because it was hurting very bad. It felt like I couldn’t contract my head to posture up. After the fight when I cooled down, it was terrible. It was like my neck couldn’t move. Now it’s still sore, but it got a lot better. I got treatment on it, so I’ll be back 100 percent.
For now, he wants to take a vacation to forget about life for a while, or at least fighting.
Dana White is going to talk with my agent, they’re going to figure it out, and we’ll see after I come back from vacation, he explained. We’ll see what I want to do and where my head is. I have no intention of holding onto the belt and freezing the division. That’s not what I want to do. Robert Whittaker is in my contract. If I want to fight again, it has to be against Robert Whittaker at 185. That’s in my contract. I cannot, for example, go fight Tyron Woodley or go fight another guy [the another guy is Conor McGregor].
GSP said he didn’t know if he would return to 170 after defending the 185 belt. He even giggled when asked if he might simply retire instead of defending the belt.
I don’t know, he said. It’s the same question from a different angle. That’s why I can’t talk about this – I don’t know right now. I understand it’s normal, but I don’t even know for myself what’s going to be the next move.
His BJJ coach John Danaher also revealed what St-Pierre went through to win.
“The victory by welterweight Georges St-Pierre at middleweight to gain a new world title was a bold experiment with a truly great result, but was not without its problems,” wrote Danaher on his social network. “The fundamental problem was always going to be size. Mr. St-Pierre always walked into the Octagon around 189 pounds on fight night throughout his career. This made him a very averaged sized welterweight. In order to move up to middleweight, Mr. St-Pierre took on a nutritional program designed to facilitate weight gain and hold weight during the rigors of a full fight camp. The result was a disaster.
“Two weeks into camp he developed severe stomach pains and vomiting. Initially, it was suspected that he had an illness, but all tests came back negative. The situation deteriorated to the point that for two weeks of a six week camp there was no training at all. At a critical point we gave him a two day window to either get back in the gym or call off the fight.
“The first grappling workout he had he vomited heavily prior to workout and then went to work. The next day he had the worst standing sparring session I have ever seen him have. Finally, the stomach issue resolved itself to a degree where he could train satisfactorily and the workouts improved dramatically – though the vomiting continued all the way up to the day of the fight. He was eating so much more than usual in an attempt to keep weight on and stay close to 200 pounds.
“When he went through the final weight cut the big question was, would he return to his bigger size? The answer was a resounding no. On fight night he weighed in at 190.5 – almost identical to his usual fight weight as a welterweight. The great effort to increase size just didn’t work out and Mr. St-Pierre went in to win the title as a mid-sized welterweight. It seems his body just finds a comfort zone around 190 pounds for fighting after a weight cut and no amount of work to change that has any effect. It’s one thing to gain weight, it’s another to do so through a fight camp culminating in a weight cut and then regain the weight. It seems his body has an optimal weight for athletic performance which cannot be drastically changed.”
So GSP pulled off one of the great feats in MMA history, and he was a mess. That is the definition of a champion. Not being perfect when everything is perfect, but winning when everything is roughed up.
