(Hey, it could be worse. / Photo via Sherdog)
We’re not sure if you’ve heard about this yet but UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre hung onto his belt this past Saturday at UFC 167 with a controversial split decision win over Johny Hendricks and then kinda, sorta announced a retirement, of sorts. The story hasn’t got much attention so first off, we wanted to make sure you knew about that.
In any case, UFC president Dana White is intent on bringing GSP back to fight Hendricks again and, according to a new report from Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole, who is in Macau to cover the Manny Pacquiao/Brandon Rios boxing match this week, “Rush” told “PacMan” trainer Freddie Roach that he’ll never fight again if he doesn’t have him in his corner.
Roach said he has yet to speak to St-Pierre on the telephone, but said the champion texted him.
“He said, ‘I’m not going to fight again unless you are in my corner,’” Roach said. Asked to clarify if that meant on fight night, as well, Roach said, “Absolutely.” To this point, Roach has never been in a UFC fighter’s corner on the night of a fight.
Roach, always eager to promote himself, also said that he “pretty much came up with the game plan” for St. Pierre against Hendricks. So…good job?
I wrote elsewhere today that St. Pierre may very well want to go ahead and stay retired. He’s anxious, can’t sleep and suspects that aliens are fucking with him. Plus, he’s almost gotten knocked out two out of his last three fights and has been at it for over a decade.
I don’t know what’s more worrisome — St. Pierre believing that he’s been abducted by extra-terrestrials or him believing that Freddie Roach knows anything about MMA and should therefore be designing his game-plans and cornering him during fights.