It’s been weeks since the UFC announced a big fight between middleweight championMichael Bisping and comeback star Georges St-Pierre, yet we still don’t have a firm answer on when exactly the fight will go down. At a press conference for the fight, UFC president Dana White said they were targeting International Fight Week in July, and Michael Bisping recently confirmed that’s the hopeful date in a new episode of his podcast.
“It’s looking like July 8th,” Bisping said. “Dana’s pushing for July 8th, he told me July 8th. July 8th would be a good date for me as well. I could fight two months from now. July 8th, that works. In fact, July 8th is great for me because that’s give or take four months away. What I’m going to do, my preparation for that, I’m going to give myself two camps.”
The big question is where Georges stands when it comes to the USADA testing pool. New USADA procedures regarding the UFC just came out, and they could make things difficult for the UFC getting their big International Fight Week match up between GSP and Michael Bisping. The new rule reads “For athletes who have chosen to remove themselves from the UFC testing pool through retirement, hiatus, or a non-renewal of their contract, they are required to be in the testing pool for 6 months before they can compete.”
Does that apply to Georges St-Pierre? It’s unclear. Back in August of 2016,St-Pierre re-entered himself back into the USADA pool in anticipation of possibly headlining a card later that year. But when negotiations failed to bear fruit, did he take himself back out of the testing pool? If he did, he may not be available to compete until fall, which is the date that keeps seeming to come up when reporters talk to sources near St-Pierre’s camp.
