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UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre opened up about why he did not fight Anderson Silva.
St-Pierre is widely regarded as one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time. The former two-division champion had a dominant run at the top, ruling the welterweight division for over half a decade. He chose to step away briefly after a final 170-pound clash with Johny Hendricks, a contest he won by split decision at UFC 167 in Nov. 2013. He returned after a four-year hiatus in a move up to challenge former middleweight champion Michael Bisping. ‘Rush’ dispatched Bisping in the third round to win the 185-pound title and announced his retirement.
During his prime, there were talks of a potential showdown with fellow MMA legend Silva, a former middleweight champion who holds the record for the longest title reign in the promotion. Although interest in the matchup was high, nothing came to fruition.
Following the Jake Paul vs. Anderson Silva ceremonial weigh-ins, St-Pierre revealed why a fight with ‘The Spider’ did not happen.
“We could have done it. At the time, I was doing a tear in my division. I was fighting guys nonstop coming at me,” said St-Pierre. “I was saying to the UFC, if I fight Anderson, it would be at catchweight and we will implement the testing. UFC, they wanted to do it. I put up my rules, the way it works when you negotiate a fight, the two opponents put up what they want UFC to do and the promotion needs to deal with it.
“But UFC never wanted to do a special contract for me as well so I was fighting on my existing contract while I was going to take all the risk to deflect from my weight class. So, they didn’t want to do it. A big part of it was because of UFC.”
St-Pierre Is Out of His UFC Contract
When St-Pierre returned to face Bisping, company president Dana White wanted him to stay for a title defense. GSP signed a new deal with the promotion agreeing to multiple fights to get the title opportunity but hung up his gloves after the win.
With his involvement in the promotion of Paul’s upcoming fight with Silva, St-Pierre got asked if he was still locked into a deal with the UFC in case a potential boxing match with Silva came up.
“I’m already out of the UFC contract. I’m out. I couldn’t be here today if I wasn’t out of the UFC contract. It might piss off the UFC that I’m here but I did it because I have the freedom now to do whatever I want, with whoever I want, whenever I want.”
GSP Says a Fighters Union Will Happen Sooner or Later
Paul bet with Silva that he would need to join his efforts in making a fighters’ union in MMA if he lost. St-Pierre was involved in a similar movement in 2016 to launch an athletes’ association. However, it collapsed quickly, with leading stars like Donald Cerrone and TJ Dillashaw arguing against it.
According to St-Pierre, a fighters’ union will likely happen sooner or later.
“It’s not a question of if a union should happen, it’s a question of when it will happen. It will happen. Because it happened in boxing, it happened in basketball, hockey, and all professional sports. Mixed martial arts, unfortunately, is a young sport. It’s still a new sport, not as new as it was 20 years ago but it’s still relatively young. Sooner or later it will happen. A lot of people have tried to do it before, it fell. But sooner or later it will happen because the condition of the fighters can be improved by a lot. The salary, all the insurance after the career, a lot of guys have a lot of issues that are linked to brain damage or stuff like that.
“I feel for a lot of these guys. You only hear about the guys that make it, like Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Georges St-Pierre, who made a lot of money and we left the sport healthy and good. But the truth is that most of the guys, 99.9 percent of the guys, it’s a horror movie. It’s a bad ending to their career and in a bad way. I feel for these guys and sooner or later there will be a union. They will create certain kinds of programs to help a lot of fighters.”
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