After an exhilarating win over Michael Bisping at UFC 217, we’re now back to the standard modus operandi when it comes to Georges St-Pierre these days: wondering if we’ll ever see him fight again. The new middleweight champ is already sounding like he isn’t interested in staying in the weight class he now rules over. And according to former training partner and retired UFC fighter Patrick Cote, he may not be interested in fighting more at all.
“I have big doubts,” Cote said on The MMA Hour. “I would not be surprised if he said ‘It’s over, I just wanted to feel that feeling again.’ Why I say that is because is took him so much time to get out of the cage. He stayed in the cage and he was kind of feeling everything he was able to grab about all the emotion. He was in the cage for almost 20 minutes after the fight!
“He was looking at everything and grabbing all the energy just to say ‘That was that, I did it and I am not going to miss that anymore.’ This is the feeling I had when I was at MSG. But no, I will not be surprised if he is done with fighting.”
While St-Pierre hasn’t made anything official, his coaches seem to be priming media and the fans for an abdication of the title. His boxing coach Freddie Roach said he didn’t want GSP to continue at 185 and then his BJJ coach John Danaher detailed the ‘disaster’ Georges went through trying to put on weight for the fight, revealing the pound for pound great was puking so much they almost had to pull out of UFC 217.
And then there was St-Pierre’s own words following the fight, where he talked about an errant shot to the top of his spine that was the reason he rushed to the hospital after his win over Bisping.
.@GeorgesStPierre reveals he suffered a neck injury during his bout MW title fight at UFC 217. Watch LIVE interview: https://t.co/TgUSYw5Q11 pic.twitter.com/JZKcD9AyIn
— MMA Fighting (@MMAFighting) November 9, 2017
“I was holding Michael Bisping’s legs and he elbowed me but the elbow hit me in a particular spot, which is the basilar region of the back of the head, there’s a little bone attached to the spinal core,” St-Pierre told The MMA Hour days after his victory. “It’s why after the fight I couldn’t even tie up my shoes. My neck couldn’t even move, I had an incredible swelling in one of the muscles on the back of the neck.”
“When he hit me I saw blurry for a bit,” St-Pierre continued. “I don’t know if I had a concussion or something. It may have been a concussion. I keep fighting because when it happens, obviously survival instincts kick in. But when you watch the fight, that particular thing, it looked pretty insignificant. But it wasn’t insignificant when I received the shot. It hurt me really bad. It’s not the force of the blow, it’s the precision of it.”
St-Pierre has admitted to being diagnosed as OCD. He’s a notorious overthinker and prone to severe anxiety. An injury like this is exactly the kind of thing that could make him reconsider his desire to keep fighting … or at least to keep risking a bad beating at the hands of a much bigger middleweight opponent.
For now, Georges is taking some time off and hitting the beach, but he’s promised he doesn’t intend to hold up the middleweight division whatever his decision may be. An answer will need to come soon, though. The UFC has already scheduled UFC 221 in Perth, Australia for February 11th and clearly wants interim middleweight champ Robert Whittaker at the top of the card. Whether that will be against Georges St-Pierre remains to be seen, but we have our doubts.
