Rejoice, you fight fans who love a well-groomed world champion, for Georges St-Pierre is coming back. Maybe. Probably. He says he is, anyway, and this time, he seems like he really means it.
The former UFC welterweight champ went on “The MMA Hour” on Monday and sounded for all the world like a man who had made the decision to return and was only awaiting the fine-tuning of the details. He also sounded like a man who had a very specific return bout in mind, and it’s one that’s not without historical precedent.
According to St-Pierre (23-2 MMA 19-2 UFC), a clash with newly minted UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping (29-7 MMA, 19-7 UFC) feels big enough to lure him out of a comfortable retirement after almost three years away.
“He’s the man to beat right now,” St-Pierre said of Bisping. “I always said if I come back, my first fight would be something big that gives me the chills. And he’s a bigger name right now. He is the bigger name, the guy who has the spotlight right now.”
You’ve got to give it up to GSP. The man has always had good timing. He knew when to hit the Superman punch, when to shoot the double-leg. He knew, more or less, when to walk away. He at least seems to think he knows when to come back and finally make that move up to middleweight, and it seems to have everything to do with who’s holding the belt there.
Not to get all creepy fortune-teller on you, but this has all happened before.
Remember back in 2007, when Randy Couture, who’d retired after getting knocked out by Chuck Liddell in a failed bid to recapture the UFC light heavyweight title, announced that he’d been reborn as a heavyweight? Later, Couture would explain that he made that decision in large part because he looked at who the UFC heavyweight champion was at the time – Tim Sylvia – and figured he could probably beat that guy, so why not try?
Turns out Couture (19-11 MMA, 16-8 UFC) was right. He fought Sylvia (31-10 MMA, 9-4 UFC) at UFC 68 on March 3, 2007, and took the UFC title from him with a unanimous decision victory. He defended it exactly once, then lost it to Brock Lesnar the next year, following an attempt to quit his post as UFC heavyweight champ that resulted in a brief legal battle.
Still, the return was a lucrative and worthwhile one for Couture. He banked more checks, added more titles, generally increasing his share of both money and glory, thanks in large part to good timing and savvy target selection. It all happened right as St-Pierre was ascending the ranks of the all-time greats, too, so you can bet he was paying attention.
Now GSP wants to try a maneuver that looks very similar to the one Couture pulled off. And, when you think about how well it worked out for “The Natural,” can you really blame him?
Which is not to say that St-Pierre might have stayed gone had Bisping not shocked the world at UFC 199. His comeback talk has become so persistent of late that an actual UFC return seems inevitable.
But you’ll notice he’s not talking about coming back to welterweight, where Robbie Lawler is currently rearranging facial features as champ. He also wasn’t quite so eager to make the jump to middleweight when Luke Rockhold was the man to beat.
To hear St-Pierre tell it, the reason the Bisping fight gives him “the chills” just thinking about it is because it’s a high-profile fight against an opponent people care about – whether that caring takes the form of love or hatred. That he also thinks he can make up for the size difference with, in his words, “more skill, more athleticism, and a higher fighting IQ,” that probably doesn’t hurt either.
Bisping has already said he likes the idea, and why wouldn’t he? A fight with St-Pierre is a guaranteed blockbuster. It’ll be more lucrative than virtually any other possibility, and it also gives Bisping the option of fighting a smaller man who’s been on the shelf for a few years rather than taking on one of the many monsters of the middleweight division, all of whom are presently salivating over the thought of getting their hands on him.
For Bisping, it’s a chance to get paid and maybe even up his odds of staying champ. For St-Pierre, it’s just one more smart business move in a career filled with them. But he might want to remember that, even though Couture came back at the right time and against the right opponent, his ride didn’t stop there. For every Tim Sylvia, maybe there’s a Brock Lesnar lurking somewhere just beyond.
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