UFC 217: What’s GSP really thinking?
Canadian fighting legend risking plenty against a tough opponent in return to the Octagon
Georges St-Pierre makes his return to the Octagon on Saturday night, squaring off with Michael Bisping in a middleweight title fight that headlines the loaded UFC 217 fight card at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
It’s a fight that was announced in March without a date or venue and it’s been maligned from Jump Street, but with just a couple of more sleeps until the French-Canadian superstar’s 1,449-day hiatus comes to an end, I’m still not exactly sure why St-Pierre is back and what it means for the UFC going forward.
The excitement about St-Pierre’s return hasn’t been as great as I anticipated, which validates the “need to reintroduce him to the audience” comments that everyone scoffed at last year. If he’s not the massive payper-view draw he was before his sabbatical, and this event isn’t going to be the blockbuster everyone envisioned, what’s the payoff for bringing back the 36-year-old?
More than that, however, I really don’t understand St-Pierre’s motivation for returning.
I’ve heard the reasons he’s given for coming back and challenging Bisping for the middleweight crown: Make history as a two-division champion, not being happy with how things ended the first time, still having a bunch of good years left, etc., etc.
But there are no guarantees things will play out in his favour.
Love or hate him, Bisping is a tough guy in exceptional condition who keeps up a frenetic pace in the cage. Against an opponent like St-Pierre, who comes away from every fight looking worse for wear, it might not take long for “The Count” to have him lumped up and looking like he made a bad decision to return.
If the former welterweight champion can’t shake off the rust or dictate the terms of engagement the way he did before his sabbatical, St-Pierre could be in for a long night at the office.
And it’s not like his place in the pantheon is going to change dramatically with a win this weekend.
St-Pierre is already considered one of the greatest fighters of all time and his case has improved during his time away as Anderson Silva continued to falter and Jon Jones started collecting suspensions and positive tests. Returning to win a belt in a new weight class is nothing to sneeze at, especially given he’s been off for four years, but he’d be the fourth fighter to accomplish the feat and you know everyone will discount his accomplishment because he did it against Bisping, a guy who doesn’t get the credit he deserves.
Even if St-Pierre sticks around and picks up a couple of additional wins to equal or best Silva’s record for most consecutive UFC victories, St-Pierre’s place among the best to ever grace the Octagon doesn’t change all that much. In case you’re curious, Silva won 16 straight; GSP enters UFC 217 on a 12-fight winning streak, so he still has some work to do, which is the part that really trips me up.
But here’s the thing: I just can’t see St-Pierre being all that keen on squaring off with Robert Whittaker, the 26-year-old Australian who claimed the interim middleweight title back in July. I don’t see him having a ton of interest in sharing the cage with guys like Luke Rockhold or Yoel Romero, either.
There are a couple of fights I would think probably pique St-Pierre’s interest: Finally facing Silva after all these years and taking on welterweight champ Tyron Woodley. But the more I think about it, the more all this just feels like a detour to making the biggest fight the UFC could probably make at the moment: A bout between St-Pierre and Conor McGregor.
I know he’s demurred every time he’s been asked about a potential pairing with the Irish superstar and McGregor has recently said the right things about a lightweight title unification bout with Tony Ferguson, but I can’t shake the feeling that having the biggest draws of past and present meet in the cage is the end goal of all this.
Ultimately, I’m intrigued to see how St-Pierre looks on Saturday after nearly four years on the sidelines, but I’m skeptical how this all plays out from this weekend forward, which probably says more about the current state of the UFC than anything else.
E. Spencer Kyte covers MMA for The Vancouver Sun, The Province and Sporting News. Follow him on social media: @spencerkyte.