Georges St-Pierre made a rare media appearance this week to promote a new boxing glove by Hayabusa and talked about a range of issues with the assembled press as well as conducting an open workout session.
Read our keynotes below and scroll down to watch the full interview for yourselves.
– The former welterweight champion says he still trains, but nowadays it’s just for fun. He says he lost of the pleasure from mixed martial arts of when he was still competing as there was too much pressure on his shoulders. Now that he’s more relaxed and enjoying it more he thinks he’s actually improving his technique more.
– His initial inspiration to get into MMA came from watching Royce Gracie in the early UFC’s. As someone who was getting bullied as a youngster he admired the fact that Gracie’s technique’s gave him a way to win even against much larger opponents.
– He doesn’t watch all the UFC fights, but he does still have an interest in people who are at the top of their game to see how they operate – mentioning people like his training partner Rory MacDonald and other stars like Robbie Lawler, Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones, Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor.
– Interestingly, St-Pierre says one his favorite fighters ever is actually Tito Ortiz. GSP says he likes to watch people who are considered ‘villains’ and felt like Ortiz was very charismatic and in person was actually a nice guy who was good to his fans.
He thinks a lot of the fighters who have a ‘bad boy’ image are nice in reality but just have play up to that image to get themselves in the right mental state to fight. GSP says he’s never felt a need to do that, but he understands why others do and admits it’d be a boring sport if everyone was nice to each other all the time.
– GSP likes the idea of the UFC’s new stricter drug testing policy, but is still waiting to see how it actually works in reality. If it works out how they say it will he says he’ll be very happy.
– He admits that the Reebok deal could be an issue if he ever did return to the UFC as he has his own sponsorship deals with the likes of Under Armour and of course Hayabusa.
– He has sympathy for those who aren’t in a position to be able to say what they really think about the way the UFC operates as they might get thrown out of the company. Luckily for GSP he has no such worries and says he’s happy to speak his mind because he’s wealthy enough that he doesn’t have to fight to make a living.
“I don’t need this anymore. Maybe I would like to, but I don’t need to.”
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