If one person can relate to the current situation former Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre has found himself in with the UFC, it’s Hall Of Famer Randy Couture.
“Captain America” spoke with Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour and admitted that he sees similarities between GSP’s current situation with the UFC and his own in the past with the promotion, as along with Tito Ortiz, Couture was involved in one of the most public legal battles with the company back in 2007 and 2008.
“I certainly saw similarities, and I’m not privy to Georges’ contract and the language in Georges’ contract, but I’m sure it’s in many ways very similar to what I was dealing with back in 2007,” said “The Natural.”
Couture continued, “And maybe, unfortunately for Georges, some of the issues that were pointed in out in their contracts back then that were the impetus for me declaring my free agency back then, and trying to make that Fedor fight happen and having injunctions filed and spending a lot of money on attorneys and stuff — a lot of those things were closed. They [changed their] contracts to some extent to try and prevent athletes from doing what I had been doing.
“But it’s definitely going to be an uphill climb. These guys have controlled fighters and controlled this situation for a long, long time. And they’re good at it. So, I think Georges is certainly going to be up against it.”
While GSP’s situation has yet to fully play out, Couture also spoke about how his battle with the UFC ended, noting that he spent a lot of time and money trying to fight the now multi-billion dollar company in court while ultimately coming to the realization that at his age, it was either give in and fight or commit to retiring and spending your hard-earned money in a seemingly never-ending battle.
“I spent 13 months not competing,” Couture said. “At 44 years old, the clock was ticking. I spent more than $500,000 of my own money to try and fight over my interpretation of the language in the contract, just to continue for who knows how much longer to get a ruling and be able to go one way or the other. And at the end of the day, I wanted to compete. I wanted to fight. I’m a fighter.
“I still felt like I had competition that I wanted to get done and decided just to give it up, to hang it up, to not spend any more of my money fighting the system that was in place.”
Check out “The MMA Hour” with Ariel Helwani Monday’s at MMAFighting.com.