Georges St-Pierre vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov is one of the many fantasy fights that was never meant to be.
Towards the end of each fighter’s runs in mixed martial arts (MMA), they had made it clear how intrigued they were by the potential super fight. The iconic former Welterweight and Middleweight champion, St-Pierre, retired after he captured the latter title via a third round rear-naked choke of Michael Bisping at UFC 217 in November 2017. Nurmagomedov followed suit three years later at the height of his game with Lightweight gold in his possession.
Ideally, the bout could have happened somewhere between 2017 and 2020, presumably in a Lightweight bout, as was always speculated. That still seems wild, considering St-Pierre’s size. However, “Rush” had confidence he’d get the nod over “The Eagle” if they came to blows, even if it was in 2021 for Nurmagomedov’s attempt at going 30-0.
“I think Khabib could have beat me, I’m not saying I could have beat Khabib all the time,” St-Pierre said on Pound 4 Pound (h/t MMA Fighting). “I was confident enough to take that fight that I was thinking that if I take that fight I’m going to beat him that day at that particular place, that doesn’t mean I will beat him all the time. But I was confident, maybe I’m wrong.
“I think I would have beat him because if he would have come to put pressure on me, I would have put him down,” he concluded. “I would have had the confidence to try to go for it.”
St-Pierre’s legendary 28-fight career (26-2) concluded on a 13-fight winning streak that included redemptive efforts against his lone successors, Matt Serra and Matt Hughes. Lightweight’s Nurmagomedov, on the other hand, never lost in his 29 professional fights.
In the hypothetical match up, St-Pierre noted how well Nurmagomedov was at setting up his right-hand punches with the opponent’s fear of takedowns. Ultimately, GSP assesses himself and Nurmagomedov as proactive and reactive wrestlers, for the most part, and would have tried to wrestle Nurmagomedov in the middle of the Octagon. Throughout his whole career, GSP outwrestled his opponents collectively 102 takedowns to 10, per UFC Stats. Nurmagomedov outwrestled his 13 UFC opponents 61 to two, 21 of those came against Abel Trujillo, the record for takedowns landed in a single fight.
“I think most guys that fought Khabib were afraid of Khabib’s takedowns, so they were fighting on their heels and they were getting backed up to the wall,” St-Pierre said. “Three guys that fought Khabib did very well: Gleison Tibau, very, very close fight, if you watch that fight it’s very, very close; Michael Johnson was my training partner… If you watch the early minute of the fight, he’s doing a fantastic job until he lost his confidence because Michael Johnson is incredibly gifted, very, very talented, but when things start not going his way, the floodgate opens. I think that’s one of the mistakes he did and if he would have started the second round as good as he did in the first he would have had a better performance.
“Another guy who did well is [Justin] Gaethje, Gaethje in the beginning did very well,” he concluded. “Kick, punch, he did very well until similar story, things start to not go well and then everything falls apart.”