(GSP gets some blood drained from his knee back in January 2012, the last time this happened to him. / Photo via St-Pierre’s Facebook page)
Just because Georges St-Pierre won’t return to the UFC until the promotion improves its drug-testing policies, doesn’t mean he can’t stay in shape. In fact, the former welterweight champion tore the ACL in his left knee this week in training, and he doesn’t even have a fight coming up. That’s commitment. St-Pierre is scheduled to undergo surgery in a few days.
It’ll be a familiar process for GSP, who blew out the ACL in his right knee in December 2011, and didn’t return until the following November, when he defeated interim champion Carlos Condit at UFC 154. In other words, he’s rebounded from this injury before, and he could certainly do it again. If he wanted to. Which he might not. When informed of the news, UFC president Dana White had some rather backhanded words of sympathy:
“I didn’t think his hiatus was going to be that long. That’s one of the risks you run when you get away from the sport like that. You have a small window as a professional athlete to make what you can. The guy gave up his belt, walked away from the sport, and now he’s out for who knows how long.”
Yep. Despite his emotional fatigue and anger at the UFC’s lax drug-testing, GSP should have just sucked it up and kept fighting like a good soldier because MONEY. (And I guess this injury wouldn’t have even happened if St-Pierre was training for a UFC fight? What?) Anyway, GSP’s return timetable has been updated from “when hell freezes over” to “when hell freezes over, plus 6-8 months.”
Related: On FightOpinion, Zach Arnold suggests that GSP’s hiatus was actually putting enough financial pressure on the UFC for them to make some changes to how they approach drug testing — but now that he’s out of action for an indefinite period of time, he’s lost that leverage and the UFC doesn’t have to do a damn thing.