Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
Khabib vs. GSP.
It’s a fight that keeps coming up, even thought UFC president Dana White has shut it down multiple times. Even though Georges St-Pierre retired from the UFC after White shut it down multiple times. Yet we keep talking about it, and over the past several months it’s gone from ‘never going to happen’ to ‘holy crap maybe it will happen’ territory.
When Khabib Nurmagomedov signed a new contract leading up to his return at UFC 242, it included some sort of ‘GSP clause’ in it. And following Khabib’s big win over Dustin Poirier in Abu Dhabi, Dana White finally uttered the words we’d all been waiting for. When asked if Khabib and Georges could fight, he took a long, long, long pause … and then said “Sure.”
That pause… pic.twitter.com/ETmwim9t5N
— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) September 7, 2019
White wasn’t the only person asked about Nurmagomedov vs. St-Pierre at the post-fight press conference. Here’s what Khabib thought of the idea of a fight.
”Georges St-Pierre is great guy, great champion, great athlete,” he said. “He’s very good example for young kids. If he want to come back, if he feel hungry, if he feel he can improve his legacy with fight with me … and he can make 155, I am waiting for him. And I think maybe he like new belt? If he likes, I can give him, just only for one photo. But then he has to give me back this belt. But if he wants to fight? Welcome.”
Later Nurmagomedov tied a Georges St-Pierre superfight into another hope he had: to fight in Africa as part of a big charity event.
”They build this arena in two months,” Khabib said. “If UFC has big big fight, they can build this arena in Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, whatever. Fight there, make money, do some charity stuff. UFC can do this. I’m gonna do this if they want to support this. Why not?”
”For example, Africa is in very bad situation without water, lot of people dying because they don’t have just drinking water. We don’t have this problem but millions of people have this problem. Why not? We can do this. Let’s go. If the UFC can support this, I’m going to support this too. Maybe I can fight with Georges St-Pierre. GSP is very big star. They can build this arena in next three months, and maybe January, February, March, we can fight in some place like Congo, why not? And all money that we make, we can use on charity in Africa or something.”
”Like this, I think they make $50 million, $40 million?” he finished. “Even if they make $30 million dollar, one night and give this all money for people.”
”This kind of stuff, I like this kind of stuff.”
Of course, there’s a lot in the way of this happening so quick. St-Pierre needs to spend six months in the USADA testing pool. A deal needs to be struck between him and the UFC. And that involves all the moving parts of the lightweight division, which includes one Conor McGregor.
Georges St-Pierre vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov in Congo: Rumble In The Jungle 2! What do you think of this idea, Maniacs?