Georges St-Pierre has finally lifted the lid on what his contract demands were for a much talked-about superfight with Anderson Silva back in the day that never materialized.

In their heyday GSP and Silva were the best of the best at welterweight and middleweight respectively for a long time, and so there were inevitably a lot of rumors back then of a potential fight between the two.

There was a sense at the time that GSP’ was reluctant to move up, which was the reason that the fight didn’t happen, but in a new interview the star reveals that he was only asked once, and had made it clear to UFC officials that he was willing to do it as long as certain conditions were met.

“What happened is that, at the time and when I was in my prime and Anderson Silva was in the prime… I can only speak from my side,” St-Pierre said in an interview with Demetrious Johnson. “I don’t know what was happening on Anderson Silva’s side.

“I was only asked once by Dana and Lorenzo… and I had the request because I was like, OK, you want me to get out of my way to go up a weight class, I need to be compensated because it’s different. I’m full of challenges in my weight class, so if I’m fighting someone bigger I need to change my training, try to get bigger, maybe.”

“So my request was to fight Anderson Silva, I want to be put under contract,” St-Pierre continued. “I want to be compensated better, one. I wanted this to be done in a catchweight, because Anderson fought in PRIDE at 170, and I knew he could go down — I don’t know if he could’ve gone down in that moment… it seems like he got heavier as time goes by, so I don’t know. It’s only an impression.

“So it would be at a catchweight, so after that I could [go back down]. … If I go up, I needed to go back down because I wouldn’t spend my career there. And the third one was I wanted to have drug testing implemented. And they never got back to me.”

As far as GSP was concerned his demands were perfectly reasonable under the circumstances, so he doesn’t know why the fight didn’t happen.

“That was my intention: ‘If you make that happen, I’m in, no problem,’” St-Pierre said. “If you made it 180 [pound] catchweight, I’m in. And if you compensate me, and it was reasonable… and also the drug testing. But they didn’t follow up with that.

“I don’t know if they asked Anderson about that, but they only asked me once.”