Well. Nobody saw this coming.
A little over a week after Georges St-Pierre vacated his middleweight title after winning it from Michael Bisping at UFC 217, his coach is already out there beating the bushes on potential future matchups.
Speaking with TSN in Canada (via MMA Fighting, h/t MMA Mania), longtime trainer and friend Firas Zahabi advised that the MMA icon would look into a return for a “big, exciting fight.”
The names he mentioned specifically? Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
There’s no shortage of people calling out McGregor these days, and it makes sense for St-Pierre to get in line. Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden made the case for the bout in the wake of UFC 217, suggesting the UFC couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to let such a moneymaker pass them by and that “[t]hey should make [the] fight immediately and never look back.”
But Mayweather? That idea is flat-out baffling.
Mayweather is not a mixed martial artist, not close to St-Pierre in size or weight, and is retired from combat sports in any event.
He teased a UFC run on a recent video chat he did, but does anyone believe he’d do it? And against St-Pierre, who made his career on taking down expert strikers and wrestlers alike and smashing them into a mush with ground-and-pound?
You don’t want to say “no chance”—after all, there was no chance McGregor and Mayweather would box one another; until there was—but it sure doesn’t seem likely.
This seems a prime example of a member of the MMA community just sayin’ stuff, but you never know in combat sports.
Either way, fans can be pleased that the beloved St-Pierre is looking at fighting again, even if his choice of a possible opponent is cause for some head-scratching.
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