Over the past two months, Georges St-Pierre’s big comeback fight against middleweight champ Michael Bisping went from being an intriguing match-up to a frustrating roadblock for the 185 pound division to being cancelled outright. What happened? GSP’s timeline happened. In a message delivered on Twitter, St-Pierre revealed he wouldn’t be ready to fight until after October.
That was too long for the UFC to freeze up the hyper competitive middleweight division, so UFC president Dana White decided to pull the plug on the fight. But with millions of dollars to be made, both GSP and Michael Bisping seemed less than eager to move on from the fight. St-Pierre claimed the UFC knew he wouldn’t be ready til fall when they booked the fight. And Michael Bisping revealed he may not be able to fight until fall anyways due to a lingering knee issue.
St-Pierre may finally be seeing things the UFC’s way, though.
“[St-Pierre] says he will fight whoever the 170-pound champion is when he comes back,” White told Canadian sports network TSN. “We’re trying to put together that [Michael] Bisping – [Yoel] Romero fight. If [Bisping] can’t fight this summer, we’ll probably create an interim title between Romero and Robert Whittaker.”
Whittaker is an up and coming Australian kickboxer who blasted his way onto the title scene with a dominating knockout of former top contender Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza. Romero is an Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling who is undefeated in the UFC with an 8-0 record. He’s also someone Michael Bisping doesn’t seem to want to fight … whenever the UFC begins to seriously push a bout between the two, Bisping’s knee starts playing up.
He’ll have less of a reason to stall if Georges St-Pierre really is ready to give up his ambitions of capturing the middleweight title. But until GSP comes out and confirms it, you might want to hold off on assuming things will go exactly as White says. These days, it seems like the biggest fights in the UFC are between the organization and their stubborn roster of fighters.
