For someone as successful as Georges St. Pierre, letting go must be a tremendous hardship. Why else, after nearly two years away from the sport, would he recently announce he’s considering a return to MMA?
One of the sport’s greatest luminaries is reportedly starting to “feel the itch” more and more as the distance between himself and the UFC grows.
The question is why? With several million hopefully tucked away in a Quebec bank, GSP’s motivation can’t be financial. During his monumental title run between 2007 and 2013, GSP commanded some of the most lucrative sponsorship deals in MMA history.
Though official numbers were never released, his business partnerships with blue chip companies like Under Armour and NOS energy drink (owned by Coca-Cola), coupled with big name MMA brands like Hayabusa, GSP created quite the nest egg for himself.
So it’s not money he’s after; could it be fame? With small roles in Hollywood blockbusters like Captain America and enough magazine cover shoots to wallpaper a room with, greater media attention can’t be it either.
In fact, fame and media attention are probably the last things GSP wants; half the reason he stepped away from the sport in the first place was the intense media scrutiny he had endured for nearly a decade.
Fans outside of Canada fail to grasp how monumental of a star GSP truly was during the height of his career. His sixth career title defense against Jake Shields at the Rogers Centre in Toronto still holds the attendance record for a live North American MMA event with more than 55,000 people in attendance.
St. Pierre ended his career on a 12-fight winning streak and, of those twelve, eight were headlining main events; the amount of media obligations GSP endured over the years would be enough to drive most people crazy. And though his frustration with the constant rigmarole broke through towards the end of his career, GSP always handled himself like a consummate professional.
What’s bringing GSP back is what brings every fighter back; the allure of “just one more.” For fighters who ended their career with a loss, I get it. You fool yourself into thinking that if you got just one more crack at it you could avenge the final mar of your career and instead leave with the comforting green color of a win on your Wikipedia page.
But that’s not GSP. Of his 27 career fights, only twice has he been beaten. The level of dominance GSP enjoyed cannot be overstated. Few, if any, fighters manage to leave at the top of their game, championship belt in hand. And St. Pierre barely did so himself; his final fight against Johny Hendricks was ruled a loss by all media members scoring the contest.
In a larger sense, the Hendricks fight stands as one of the final mile markers of GSP’s career. Up until the contest, GSP cloaked himself in a veneer of invincibility. He’d been dropped by Carlos Condit a few fights earlier, but outside of those few seconds of insecurity, GSP hadn’t even lost a round in the last five years.
To see him struggle against Hendricks was a fitting end to his career. He still emerged victorious, but just so. He was humanized over those 25 minutes and, depending on who you ask, he shouldn’t have had his hand raised at the end.
But he did, and in the years to come people will forget how close the Hendricks fight was. Instead, they will remember a champion who conducted himself with such calculated technique both in and out of the cage that he managed to eclipse the MMA bubble and enter the mainstream consciousness.
That is, unless he comes back. He’s still closer to 30 than he is 40, but for only another year. On top of that, GSP has undergone two separate ACL surgeries on both knees. With a style so reliant on explosiveness, age and a pair of bum knees do not bode well for a potential return for the Quebecois champion.
So please, Georges, ride off into the sunset. Stay gone. You have nothing left to prove to the sport that you helped revolutionize. You will be remembered for decades to come as one of the greatest talents the sport has ever seen. And in a sport where we are afforded so few nice things, let us have this one.
