(Video courtesy of YouTube/FightHubTV)
When fans criticize fighters for shoddy performances, they often forget that the men and women who compete in the cage and often display superhuman feats of strength and resilience are human beings and not just machines that are packed away in the closet between fights. They have problems just like everyone else.
Even though some of us realize this, it’s always surprising to hear stories about things these tough guys (and girls) can’t do or are afraid of.
Case in point, Georges St-Pierre is afraid of heights according to Leonard Garcia, who breaks the first rule of training: You don’t talk about what happens in training.
“You know what was crazy is the first time I met Georges we went on a run in the mountain and Georges is afraid of heights. Nobody knows this. He’s like a girl when it comes to heights. And part of the run takes us on the edge of the mountain where you can safely run, but right off that edge right there it’s a drop. He’s behind me and he’s runnin’ and hes callin’ my name. I was like, ‘What?! Georges is callin’…why is he callin’ me?’ And he’s like, ‘Hey man, can I grab the back of your shirt when we’re running?’ I was like, ‘What?! Why would you want to grab the back of my shirt when we’re runnin’?”Garcia recalls with a chuckle. “And he was tryin’ to tell me, ‘The height…The height.’ I was like, ‘The height? You’re afraid of heights.’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ It’s a funny story. He was like holdin’ onto the back of my shirt and we finished out the run and he’s like, ‘Don’t tell nobody about this.’ And here I am doin’ an interview about it.”
At least he recognizes that what he’s doing is offside. Garcia did have some praise for the UFC welterweight champ after throwing him under the bus for being a pussy.
“Georges is a good dude. He’s a big time superstar. Not only because he held the back of my shirt when we ran, but afterwards he was like, ‘All you guys, I’m gonna take you out. We’ll all go out to eat and stuff. He’s just an all-around good person. He’s real, real cool and he doesn’t make you feel like it’s Georges St-Pierre. He’s a superstar. He’s just a regular guy and you get in there and you watch him train and you see it’s the stuff that he can do as well,” Garcia explains. “He just takes it to a whole other level even in training. Just being around guys like that makes you want to be a lot better. That’s what he’s good at. He’s good at bringing that to the gym. He wants everybody to do as good as he’s doin’, so he’s a great guy to have around.”
It probably also isn’t terrible to have him around at the club, since he probably turns down more women than all of the guys at Jackson’s have dated and they have to rebound from the rejection with someone, right?