GSP in no ‘Rush’ to return to competition

If Georges St. Pierre, the greatest welterweight fighter the sport has ever seen does come back, at least he’ll have two good knees. That’s about all we really got out of this interview.

Inside MMA’s Ron Kruck caught up with GSP recently and their interview aired on AXS TV last night. If you’re lookingfor a definitive answer about Georges coming back, well, you’re not going to get one. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say.

“After my first comeback when I fought Condit I had a lot of fun, it was a great training camp. After that..not that good. And the last one..not good at all, you know. I lost the motivation, I lost the fun of it. I think for me I needed to step out of it. I need to find the fire back. The need..the feeling that I want is the need to compete again and mixed martial arts is a sport that you cannot have a bad day. It’s not like a race , it’s not like a hockey or a football game…If you have a bad day you can get hurt really bad. I truly believe if find fun of doing it again with time and if I find the fire back I believe I’m the best in the world and if I ever want to come back it’s going to be to show. But right now I’m enjoying my time.”

St. Pierre took what he would call an ‘indefinite leave‘ from the sport that made him a multi-millionaire last December following an  equal parts brutal, and controversial split decision win over the man who would end up being his rightful successor, Johny ‘Bigg Rigg’ Hendricks. If this is it for Georges, he leaves the sport with a record of 25-2, having avenged both of those losses with decisive finishes. He has nothing left to prove. When that “who was the best mixed martial artist off all-time” argument comes up, and it does often, GSP is the easiest fighter to make a case for. Especially when you consider what happened to Anderson Silva over the past year. If he does comes back, it wouldn’t hurt his concrete legacy, but he does risk suffering a similar fate.

I’d be the last person to try to tell a professional like Georges to think twice before embarking on a comeback. However, I will be the first to say I’m sick of seeing the legends of the UFC’s golden age get beat up by the new breed. I fear the same for Georges if he decides to return after his extended layoff. St. Pierre is easily one of, if not the greatest mind this sport has ever seen. That said, MMA is like modern technology. It’s constantly evolving, upgrading, and being replaced. The point fighting style Georges adopted during the latter part of his career isn’t going to fly against killers like Robbie Lawler and Johny Hendricks moving forward. Technically he did beat Johny at UFC 167 to leave the sport with a ridiculous 12-fight win streak, but at what cost? The recurring  nightmares of the punishment he took against the man who holds the belt that made him a Canadian hero can’t have him rushing back to the octagon anytime soon. The undying competitor inside of him though, that man will never let him lie in bed at night with out at least dreaming about exacting revenge and leaving the sport with another decisive victory to end all victories.

image credit – (Jacques Boissinot – Canadian Press)