Despite already being widely regarded as one of the greatest fighters ever to step into the Octagon, Georges St-Pierre still has ambitious plans to build on his legacy as he prepares to make his comeback later this year.
During an interview with Ariel Helwani on ‘The MMA Hour’ show, GSP revealed that his motivation to return to the Octagon after over three years on the sidelines is to prove that he’s the best fighter of all-time, and he’s willing to compete in multiple weight-classes to prove it.
“I walk around at 185, 190 pounds,” St-Pierre told Helwani. “I’m going to fight at 185 right now. I even know some guys who fight at 155 (who) walk around in the offseason at a bigger weight than I am. I can possibly fight in those three divisions.
But I’m back for one reason, I want to make history. I’m going to be 36 years old when I’m going to fight, and it’s all going to depend on what’s going to happen and how it’s going to happen.
“I have no desire to fight until I’m 40-something years old. These are my last fight few that I’m going to do, and I want to pick them very carefully. And when I say carefully, I [mean] that I want to make the biggest fights possible. The fights that are going to cement my legacy as the best of all-time. And that’s what I want to do, I want to make history. And maybe I’m going to fail, but at least if I fail, I’m going to have no regrets when I’m going to be 50 years old.”
GSP’s comeback fight will come against current middleweight champion Michael Bisping at a time and place that’s still to be confirmed later this year, but after that he’s keeping an open mind as to who might be next.
“Who will be the man that, if I beat (him), it will cement my legacy to be the best of all-time? Who will it be, the man that will have the highest stock? What will be my next move to do something that would not be seen before? That’s going to depend. So we don’t know. We can have an idea or speculate, but we don’t know.”
With that being said, it seems there is somebody that’s caught his eye at welterweight that he believes could be on course to become the divisions next champion.
“There’s a guy in the welterweight division I see, to me, that if I have to make a prediction, I believe he will be the champion. I don’t like to see past things, but I think as he is right now, Demian Maia is very, very skilled.
“I see him as a very big threat right now for the title. I think he’s going to win over (Jorge) Masvidal, and I think he’s going to win over (Tyron) Woodley if he fights him. He’s older and he’s in his prime right now. I think he reached his perfect timing between physical, mental, and his game. I think he’s just so good at what he does. He’s like a blade of a katana. I think his blade is very sharp, it’s perfectly polished. He’s going to be very hard to stop right now.”
