During his first press conference back as an official UFC fighter, Georges St-Pierre was guarded about his comeback goals, simply saying “I don’t have a lot of fights left but I want to make them as big as possible, so everything I’m going to do, I’m going to do the biggest fights as possible, and I’m going to make history.”
But now that some time has gone by, his plan to cement his legacy as the best mixed martial artist of all time with guys like Conor McGregor around has been revealed. Uproxx has learned from sources that St-Pierre hopes to win the middleweight title, then take back his old welterweight title, and then challenge for the lightweight title. If he succeeds, he’d become the only fighter in history to hold UFC belts in three divisions. If the timing works out, he could even hold them concurrently.
St-Pierre has teased his ability to compete in three divisions multiple times since announcing his intention to return to fighting, most recently on an episode of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.
“I walk around at 185, 190 pounds,” he said. “I’m going to fight at 185 right now. I even know some guys who fight at 155 that walk around in the off-season at a bigger weight than I am. I can possibly fight in those three divisions. 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 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.”
There’s a lot of moving parts involved in St-Pierre’s plan coming together flawlessly. All it would take to derail things is a knee injury on the part of St-Pierre or any of the three champs he hopes to face to ruin the timing that might allow Georges to hold all three belts at the same time. According to our source, the UFC is willing to accommodate that goal up to a point by setting up a tournament at 185 pounds to clear out the division logjam in the meantime. Whether the winner of the tournament would face GSP or if he would vacate the belt to the winner is unclear at this point.
And of course the big hope is this will all end with a lightweight title fight against Conor McGregor in 2018 … but who knows what the unpredictable Irish champion will be up to then. Will he still be dealing with Floyd Mayweather? And if the potential billion dollar fight does go down, will Conor ever fight in the UFC again? Regardless, St-Pierre isn’t about to let a lack of Conor McGregor stop him from cementing his legacy in the sport. But it sure would be a hell of a way to finish things off. Now we just have to watch and see how these best laid plans play out.
