GSP: Who can I fight to cement my legacy as G.O.A.T.?

Former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, 35, appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and discussed his return to the Octagon, his title fight vs. middleweight champion Michael Bisping, and why.

I walk around at 185, 190 pounds,” said GSP as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “I’m going to fight at 185 right now. I even know some guys who fight at 155 [‘oo] walk around in the offseason at a bigger weight than I am. I can possibly fight in those three divisions. But I’m back for one reason, I want to make history. I’m going to be 36 years old when I’m going to fight, and it’s all going to depend on what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen.

I have no desire to fight until I’m 40-something years old. These are my last fight few that I’m going to do, and I want to pick them very carefully. And when I say carefully, I [mean] that I want to make the biggest fights possible. The fights that are going to cement my legacy as the best of all-time. And that’s what I want to do, I want to make history. And maybe I’m going to fail, but at least if I fail, I’m going to have no regrets when I’m going to be 50 years old.

I’ve made a lot of scenarios in my mind, but what I’ve learned in the past is, I used to overthink stuff. That was one of my problems when I was fighting. I even had problems to pull the trigger sometimes because I was overthinking stuff. When you overthink stuff, it never happens the way you want. So it depends on what’s going to happen. What will be the next big thing for me? Who will be the man to beat?

Who will be the man that, if I beat [‘im], it will cement my legacy to be the best of all-time? Who will it be, the man that will have the highest stock? What will be my next move to do something that would not be seen before? That’s going to depend. So we don’t know. We can have an idea or speculate, but we don’t know.

GSP declined to reveal all his plans and goals at his return press conference, and now explains that is because the landscape in MMA changes to quickly. But if he beats Bisping, he appears to have an eye on a fight at weltweight.

There’s a guy in the welterweight division I see, to me, that if I have to make a prediction, I believe he will be the champion, said St-Pierre. I don’t like to see past things, but I think as he is right now, Demian Maia is very, very skilled.

I see him as a very big threat right now for the title. I think he’s going to win over Masvidal, and I think he’s going to win over Woodley if he fights him. He’s older and he’s in his prime right now. I think he reached his perfect timing between physical, mental, and his game. I think he’s just so good at what he does. He’s like a blade of a katana. I think his blade is very sharp, it’s perfectly polished. He’s going to be very hard to stop right now.

The list of candidates for Greatest of All Time in MMA is not long and includes Fedor Emelianenko, Dan Henderson, Jon Jones, Ronda Rousey, Kazushi Sakuraba, Anderson Silva, and of course GSP. Who is your first choice?