UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping has been pontificating about former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre ever since (six weeks ago) their bout was announced. He has been going after “GSP” in interviews and on social media. Bisping has already gone on the record by saying that St-Pierre wants the fight because he thinks Bisping is easy and that St-Pierre has no intention of defending the belt if he wins but will instead chase a super-fight with Conor McGregor.
In the middle of all of this chaos, St-Pierre has mostly remained silent about Bisping. However, all of that silence has stopped, and the noise picked up over the weekend when St-Pierre spoke with RT Sport. During the interview, he spoke about Bisping’s comments and answering why he feels that now is the time to make the move to middleweight instead of returning to welterweight.
“I never was interested in moving up a division because I had a lot of work to do,” St-Pierre said (transcript courtesy of MMA Fighting. “Every time I finished a fight, I had another challenger coming at me, and I also blew out the ACL in my knee. I had an injury, so I took some time off, and I had to come back and right away defend the title again. Also one of the reasons is the weight. I’m not a big welterweight. I’m an average/middle-sized welterweight. Now that I have some time off, I took some time to gain a little bit of weight and make sure it’s well done. I’ve never been afraid to compete at 185 [pounds]. It’s not to fight at 185, the problem is when you train, you need to train with bigger guys, and in order to train with bigger guys, it has more chance to have injuries. So that’s the thing. But now is the perfect opportunity for me to do it. I had some time off. I took some time to gain some weight. I’m still putting on some weight.”
St-Pierre will still be giving up a good amount of size to Bisping. However, St-Pierre isn’t worried because he believes the size advantage will only make one small difference for Bisping.
“Of course Michael Bisping will be bigger than me, but I believe that will be the only advantage that he will have – his size. Technically, tactically, athletically, I have all the edges on him. It doesn’t matter if he’s taller and bigger than me. The only difference that it’s gonna make is when he hits the floor, it’s gonna make a bigger boom.”
St-Pierre went on to explain that the reason a date for the fight hasn’t been set yet is do to some clearances and “other things” with USADA. He expects that the fight will be announced soon for some time after the summer.
“I think he’s lying. I know he wants to fight me and I want to fight him, and this fight’s gonna give him more money. It comes down to his decision, but if he wants to do it, I’m down to do it. That’s who I’m getting ready for. If things change, I’m gonna have to turn around and do a quick turnaround but no problem. I can do it. But he’s the man, he’s the one that has the belt. For me, he’s [got] the highest stock right now, and I always aim for the high area.”
“It’s a very ambitious plan [Bisping laid out]. I have a plan in the back of my head but I’m not gonna talk about it right now because I’m not a talker, I’m a doer. A lot of people need to talk to promote themselves. Everybody knows who’s who here. I’m not a new fighter. They know who I am. My fights talk by themselves, my resume talks by [itself]. It’s gonna depend on what’s gonna happen and how it’s gonna happen when I fight Michael Bisping. When this fight will be finished, I will go to reorient my career but it could be anything.”
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