Learning St-Pierre’s next foe will have to weight
Canadian UFC champ might not defend middleweight title in his next fight
DANNY AUSTIN
CALGARY Georges St-Pierre is making no guarantees he’ll be defending his newly won UFC middleweight championship the next time he steps into the octagon.
After the Canadian beat Michael Bisping on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden to claim the 185-pound belt, UFC president Dana White insisted St-Pierre’s next fight would be a middleweight title unification match against interim champion Robert Whittaker.
After a career spent fighting at 170 pounds, though, St-Pierre wasn’t making any promises when he spoke with Postmedia on Thursday morning.
“Anything can happen in the UFC,” St-Pierre said from Manhattan, where he rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
“My real weight is welterweight (170 pounds). My real size, I weigh 190 or 192 pounds, but I know I have the title so we’ll talk with the UFC and see what happens.”
In the lead-up to his blockbuster fight with Bisping, St-Pierre told reporters repeatedly that he was contractually obligated to take on Whittaker if he did win the middleweight belt.
Anyone who pays any sort of attention to the UFC, though, knows promises like that are broken constantly in the promotion.
And right now, St-Pierre has a lot of leverage in his negotiations over his next fight. White told reporters Saturday night the GSPBisping fight was the top-selling pay-per-view event in Canadian history, outselling even this summer’s heavily promoted boxing match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather.
When you’re that big a star, you can pick and choose which opponents you fight — and which weight class you do it at.
And from the sounds of things, St-Pierre didn’t have the greatest time putting on the weight he needed to fight at 185 pounds without being considerably smaller than Bisping.
“It was hard, for a month I had to shovel food down my throat,” St-Pierre said. “It caused me a lot of stomach pain and reflux when I was eating. I was throwing up in the morning but I kept eating … It was very hard, it’s not a healthy way of living.”
If St-Pierre decides his future in the UFC is going to be fought somewhere other than at middleweight, it would seem inevitable the next time we see him in the octagon he’ll be fighting Tyron Woodley to regain the welterweight belt he gave up when he walked away from MMA four years ago.
First, though, St-Pierre is going to take a break.
As impressive as his win on Saturday night was, the 36-year-old didn’t make it through the evening without damage.
He was unavailable to reporters after the fight because he needed medical attention at a local hospital.
At the time, it was assumed the medical care he received was to close the deep gash on his face that Bisping opened up, but St-Pierre clarified on Thursday that wasn’t the case.
“I got elbowed in the back of the head and it caused a very bad inflammation in the back of my head and my neck was very stiff,” St-Pierre said. “I couldn’t even tie my shoes, it was so stiff. When you look at the fight, I know when it happened.
“It looked like nothing, but it caught me right at the perfect spot. It was dangerous, it was close to the attachment of the spinal cord.
“You’re not supposed to hit there, but sometimes in the action you don’t realize. It wasn’t a big elbow, but it was very well-placed.”
CANCELLATIONS
Wednesday afternoon was a rough one for fight fans.
First, the UFC announced a highly anticipated bantamweight fight scheduled for UFC 219 in late December was cancelled.
The fight was set to pit former champion Dominick Cruz against the hard-hitting Jimmie Rivera, with the winner widely expected to get the next 135-pound title shot against newly crowned T.J. Dillashaw.
Unfortunately, the fight was cancelled because Cruz broke his arm in training. As of Thursday afternoon, there was no word on whether the UFC was attempting to line up a replacement opponent for Rivera.
As much as fans might like to see Rivera fight sooner rather than later, it might make sense to have him wait for Cruz in this particular case.
There aren’t a ton of bantamweight contenders just hanging around these days, and the fight represents an opportunity to either give Rivera a push or get Cruz back in line for another rivalrybuilding bout against the champion.
A couple hours later, the day got worse with the announcement that the headlining fight of next month’s UFC 218 card was off as well.
The bout was supposed to feature featherweight king Max Holloway defending his title against the always-popular Frankie Edgar, but Brazilian outlet Combate confirmed that the fight was cancelled because Edgar suffered a fractured orbital bone.
The good news is Holloway took to Twitter to promise fans in Detroit that he would be fighting on the card regardless of whether Edgar was in or out, so there’s a good chance the 145-pound belt will be defended on Dec. 2 anyway.