Everyone has been wondering what Nick Diaz did to get Georges St-Pierre so rattled that he personally called UFC president Dana White to ask him for their main-event fight at UFC 158.
Diaz has obviously tried everything under the sun to get under St-Pierre’s skin, but it’s nothing new for the Canadian champion; GSP has been called out, criticized and insulted by almost every opponent he’s ever faced.
Now, the real incident that caused the rift has been made public by White, and it goes all the way back to 2011 when Diaz called out St-Pierre at UFC 137 following his win over BJ Penn.
White was a guest on the Jim Rome Show on Wednesday, where he told the story of how Diaz literally stalked St-Pierre around the event’s host hotel looking to fight him. For Diaz, it obviously wasn’t about finishing their business in the Octagon.
Nobody has talked about this, I haven’t said anything about it, but at one of the fights, the one where he really starts calling Georges out, he was chasing Georges around the hotel and like yelling at him and stuff. Georges thought he was going to try to fight him in the hotel. He was just waiting for the elevator doors to open and see Nick Diaz.
Like at the last fight where he said all that stuff after his last fight when he said all that stuff about Georges, he was really messing with Georges bad at the fight, like trying to fight him at the hotel. That really pissed Georges off.
White downplayed the reality of Diaz actually fighting St-Pierre in the hotel (although Diaz has fought an opponent in a hospital before), but he said the incident caused the Canadian to snap and work very hard to get a shot at “The Stockton Bad Boy.”
“I don’t think that would ever happen, but Georges St-Pierre felt like it was,” said White. “Georges has said publicly many times when he was younger he used to get bullied. That’s what got him into martial arts. He just has this crazy thing about bullies and he thinks Nick Diaz is a bully.”
St-Pierre has faced criticism over his last five fights for all of them ending in decision, but from the sound of things, he’s focused on not only beating Diaz but obliterating him.
“Georges St-Pierre, I talked to him last week, he said ‘Dana, you have no idea what I’m going to do to this kid, I wanna make him retire’,” said White.
St-Pierre gets his chance on Saturday night in Montreal at UFC 158.
Damon Martin is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report.
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