Dana White pulled the plug on Georges St-Pierre’s middleweight title fight with Michael Bisping earlier this week, and the Canadian superstar has now spoken out for the first time about the snub.
In an interview with MMAFighting.com, St-Pierre admitted he was still coming to terms with White’s announcement, which appeared to point the finger of blame at the fact the returning star didn’t want to get back into the Octagon to fight Bisping until November at the earliest.
Nevertheless, it seems like he’s not completely given up on the idea that he could still fight the middleweight champion.
“I want to fight Bisping and I think Bisping wants to fight me,” GSP told Ariel Helwani. “I just learned the news. I don’t know what to say. It might be an emotional response by Dana or maybe it’s to put pressure on me.”
Despite his obvious disappointment at the way things are turning out, St-Pierre admitted that he understood why other leading contenders in the 185lb class had grown frustrated with the fact that the title was being put on hold for so long, though he stopped short of apologizing for it.
“In this sport, among fighters, when one fighter gets an opportunity, it always leaves more fighters unhappy than happy.
“It’s the nature of a one-man sport. I’ve been there.”
Since the news of the fight cancellation broke, there’s been talk that GSP could now fight Anderson Silva instead, but in a seperate interview yesterday, the former welterweight kingpin appeared lukewarm on the idea.
“Eh… It could happen,” St-Pierre told Michael Landsberg on TSN. “It depend on the condition. Fight is about timing, you know what I mean? Sometime, some guys, their stock is high, some guy their stock is lower. You want the guy, their stock is the highest. It fluctuates. I don’t think his stock right now is very high. He’s a legend, stuff he has done in the past, but he’s not the same as he was back in the day.”
According to White, Bisping will now be fighting current No.1 contender Yoel Romero instead, with rumors suggesting it could take place at UFC 213 in July, but apparently that’s not a done deal yet, so it’ll be interesting to see if GSP will attempt to negotiate his way back into the fight.
