Former two-division UFC champion, Georges St-Pierre has claimed that a potential super-fight against former lightweight kingpin, Khabib Nurmagomedov was never going to come to fruition, insisting that UFC president, Dana White “kinda lied” to him when he initially reached out and floated the fight.
St-Pierre, a former undisputed welterweight and middleweight champion, has been out of action since his return to the Octagon in November 2017 at UFC 217, managing to scoop the middleweight crown in a fourth round rear-naked choke win against Michael Bisping. St-Pierre officially announced his retirement from the sport in 2019 after he recovered from ulcerative colitis.
For Khabib, the former undisputed lightweight titleholder called time on his professional mixed martial arts career back in October 2020 following a successful title unification win against Justin Gaethje, boasting an undefeated 29-0 professional record.
In the time since the Dagestan native’s retirement, he has been linked extensively with a superfight against former duel-weigh kingpin, St-Pierre – however, once of the most intriguing fights in promotional antiquity has since failed to ever materialize.
Speaking on the failed pairing once more, St-Pierre claimed that UFC leader, White made it seem that Khabib had already agreed to fight him during a brief call when he floated the matchup – basically lying to the Canadian favorite in his estimation.
“What happened now – because Khabib (Nurmagomedov) is retired and I’m retired – so now, the UFC… Dana (White) called me and he’s like, ‘Oh, now would you be interested to fight Khabib?’ He asked,” Georges St-Pierre told Patrick Bet-David during a recent interview. “He called me. But I thought it was strange because I never wanted to do it.”
“And now, because he called me for that reason, I was like… I didn’t want to do it, but I told Dana, just to see what happens because I was curious,” Georges St-Pierre said. “You know it’s always a chess game when the promoter calls you. I didn’t say no, I said, ‘OK, let me think about it.’ The way Dana talked to me, it was like Khabib already accepted. But it wasn’t true. It was just fishing to make the fight happen. They knew now that we were both retired, so now, for them, it was an opportunity to make a big-money fight.”
St-Pierre then claimed that Khabib’s manager, Dominance MMA leader, Ali Abdelaziz, made it seem like he was only now interested in fighting his client, with the knowledge that Khabib was now-retired.
Georges St-Pierre claims Dana White “kinda lied” to him in a bid to make a fight with Khabib
“So I said gonna think about it and I wait a few days and I saw in the media that Ali Abdelaziz came out publicly and said, ‘Hey, now Georges wants to fight, but now we already retired…’ It was all BS,” Georges St-Pierre said.
“Dana kinda lied to me,” Georges St-Pierre said. “They (the UFC) didn’t approach Khabib first, they approached me first to make it happen. I know now for a fact. A hundred percent.” (Transcribed by Bloody Elbow)