Kenny Florian recently talked about his time training with Georges St-Pierre and shared insight on the UFC Hall of Famer’s work ethic. In a new podcast documentary on St-Pierre by MMA TRUFAN, Florian talked about training with St-Pierre as a team member at Tristar Gym in Montreal. During that time he saw St-Pierre outwork virtually […]
Kenny Florian recently talked about his time training with Georges St-Pierre and shared insight on the UFC Hall of Famer’s work ethic. In a new podcast documentary on St-Pierre by MMA TRUFAN, Florian talked about training with St-Pierre as a team member at Tristar Gym in Montreal. During that time he saw St-Pierre outwork virtually everybody in the sport.
“I trained an incredible amount. I could not sustain, and I’ve never seen anybody been able to sustain the volume of training that Georges St-Pierre was able to do. You could do it for a few days and you could do it for maybe a week. But, I can’t tell you how many people have tried to do that and have actually left or failed in that process of trying to keep up with Georges St-Pierre. And that’s not something that Georges does for a week and then stops. He’s doing that week in and week out.”
“Now I think there was certainly a lot of overtraining that Georges St-Pierre did. I’m not saying it was a perfect process. But I’ve never seen anybody train more than Georges St-Pierre.”
Florian on GOAT
Florian explained how St-Pierre still trains regularly even though he has been officially retired since February of 2019. He also talked about where he thinks St-Pierre belongs on the list of the all-time greats in the sport.
“I’ve said this for a long time. Even when Anderson Silva was kind of touted as the GOAT, I always had Georges St-Pierre at the top of the list. Not only because of his consistency but also the quality of competition that he faced at the time. For me, that kind of consistency and also that kind of well-rounded martial arts skill is what stands out to me.”
Listen to the MMA TRUFAN documentary on Georges St-Pierre below.
Filed under: UFC, NewsNick Diaz will fight Carlos Condit for the UFC interim welterweight championship on February 4. But what happens to the interim champ after that? UFC President Dana White says he expects the interim champion to fight the reigning …
Nick Diaz will fight Carlos Condit for the UFC interim welterweight championship on February 4. But what happens to the interim champ after that? UFC President Dana White says he expects the interim champion to fight the reigning champion Georges St. Pierre sooner rather than later.
After UFC on FX 1 on Friday night, White told Ariel Helwani that St. Pierre is in better shape following surgery to repair a torn ACL than doctors expected, and that St. Pierre is already working out and getting himself prepared for a welterweight title unification fight in the summer. That’s a more optimistic timeline than previously reported: St. Pierre had indicated he didn’t think he’d be able to return to the Octagon until the fall.
“GSP’s rehab could not be going better,” White said. “He was texting me pictures of him kicking, doing everything. … I think he’s going to be back sooner than doctors anticipated.”
So it sounds like the Condit-Diaz winner will take on St. Pierre next, rather than defend the interim title while St. Pierre continues to rehabilitate. And while St. Pierre has no control over which man he fights next, White said St. Pierre is hoping it’s Diaz.
“He says, ‘I am praying every night when I go to bed that Nick Diaz wins this fight,'” White said. “I have never seen Georges St. Pierre hate somebody. He hates Nick Diaz. I’ve never seen him so motivated to fight somebody and to beat somebody like Nick Diaz.”
Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, NewsOne of the interesting subplots of the Georges St-Pierre vs. Carlos Condit UFC 137 main event is the fact that both fighters currently train under Greg Jackson.
MMAFighting.com spoke to Jackson shortly after the UFC announced the welterweight title fight on Wednesday to find out where his allegiances will lie come Oct. 29.
A transcript of our conversation can be found below.
Ariel Helwani: Greg, two of your star fighters are going to fight each other in October. What will do you?
Greg Jackson: Teammate protocols are pretty clear in this situation so everybody knows what happening. I step out, the other coaches — John [Danaher], Phil [Nurse] and Firas [Zahabi] — will take care of GSP and probably [Mike] Winkeljohn and some of the other guys here will take care of Carlos. But I step out of it, so I won’t be cornering either guy. They’ll fight each other. Those are the new teammate protocols. We knew this would be coming — it will probably be coming again –but this time we are very well prepared.
Carlos trains in Albuquerque full-time, while GSP’s home base is in Montreal, so how will you not offer advice when you see him in the gym?
Carlos is still training with a team. I am just not going to do game plans and private lessons and everything that I normally do for the guys because usually it’s a pretty intense process — I give them private lessons all the time — heavy on the game planning, heavy on the personal growth plan, and for this, I’ll just let the other coaches do that for both Georges and Carlos. So I’ll just step out. They’re all amazing coaches. Geez, I’m the worst coach on the team. They’ll all do their thing.
Are you disappointed that they have to fight each other?
Nah, I mean, I don’t like it. They are two of my friends. Me and Georges, I mean, I love that man to death. And Carlos has been, since he came back to the gym, has been on a destruction streak. So they both have to eat, they have to make money. I really love training, working with my guys. There’s two of my favorites that I don’t get to work with this time, so that’s kind of a bummer. But I don’t care about the money; I don’t care about the fame; I don’t care about any of that stuff. They’ve got to make a living, but I can’t look across the cage at one of my guys. I just can’t do it.
Will GSP come to New Mexico for this camp?
No, I don’t think so. That wouldn’t make much sense if Carlos was here. The team is such a well-oiled machine after so many years of being together it’s not going to be a big deal.
Have they ever trained together?
Not much. I don’t know if they have at all, so not much. Carlos only came back a little bit ago and Georges comes in and out, and I go up there [to Montreal]. So I don’t think they have trained together at all.
I’m guessing you won’t offer a prediction on the fight?
Absolutely not (laughs). Since they’re both members of our team, I predict somebody from our team is going to win.
Where will you watch the fight?
I’ll be there because Donald Cerrone is fighting that night, Eliot Marshall … I got, like, four other guys. I’ll be there, but hopefully I’ll duck out before the main event. It’s just not something I want to watch. That’s their business. Sometimes brothers got to fight and it will be what it is and everything will be good again. They’re both really stellar, standup guys. You know, Georges, I cannot say enough good things about him. Not only Georges St-Pierre the fighter but Georges St-Pierre as a person. That man is phenomenal and the same for Carlos Condit. Such a good guy with a good heart. They’re going to have a great dust up, I hope they get Fight of the Night and then they can feed their families.
It’s hard to imagine it now, but back when UFC president Dana White first used the phrase “business as usual” (many, many times) to describe what life would look like for Strikeforce after the Zuffa purchase, it wasn’t a punchline. He meant it. Sort of…
It’s hard to imagine it now, but back when UFC president Dana White first used the phrase “business as usual” (many, many times) to describe what life would look like for Strikeforce after the Zuffa purchase, it wasn’t a punchline. He meant it. Sort of. Maybe he even believed it, or at least he expected us to believe it.
That lasted about fifteen minutes.
Now, with the announcement that Strikeforce champ Nick Diaz will face Georges St. Pierre at UFC 137 this fall, we can finally put it to bed for good and forget we ever even considered taking it seriously. Snatching Strikeforce’s champ and signing him to a new contract so he can fight the UFC champ? Not business as usual. Not even close. And we should all be very, very glad.
After UFC 129, when White was asked whether a GSP-Diaz fight was even possible under the current contracts, the big bossman replied that he could probably do whatever he wanted to do with Diaz – if he wanted it badly enough.
Translation: if fans get vocal enough about wanting to see this fight and no other, we’ll move mountains to make it happen if we have to.
Fans were, so the UFC did. While a GSP-Anderson Silva superfight might get some people’s motors running, putting it off in order to allow St. Pierre a chance to cement his welterweight status once and for all is the move that makes more sense. GSP-Diaz is the fight that feels like it absolutely has to happen, and now it will.
Sadly, such is not always the case in combat sports.
For instance, remember back when Diaz versus “Mayhem” Miller seemed like the bout that made the most sense for Strikeforce? You know, since Miller was an MTV star who’d been jumped by Diaz and crew on live network television, and since the two couldn’t be in the same building without wanting to murder one another?
That fight would have promoted itself, but Strikeforce couldn’t make it happen. Between discrepancies over the weight the two would fight at, and CBS’ irrational hatred for Miller, nothing ever got done. It was a perfect moment, but the moment passed with nothing to show for it.
Or take Diaz’s recent boxing ultimatum. Unless the UFC gave them St. Pierre, Diaz’s manager, Cesar Gracie, told MMA Fighting in early May, his fighter was going to take his talents to the boxing ring for a bout with Jeff Lacy. Whether you think trading leather with the big gloves would have been a good idea or a horrible one for Diaz, in the end it was his decision to make. Strikeforce had given him a contract that allowed for it, so who was going to stop him?
Obviously, it doesn’t serve Zuffa’s interest to let Diaz get punched in the face by a washed-up former boxing champ while the UFC welterweight champ suffers from a dearth of compelling challengers, so it did what it had to do to talk him off the ledge. As Gracie put it in an interview with USA Today, the UFC “compensated [Diaz] for not boxing,” and in the end it got what it wanted.
More importantly, the fans got what they wanted. The cross-promotional champion-versus-champion fight that seemed so unrealistic that it was hardly even worth talking about a year ago was now a reality with a date and a venue. While we can’t pretend there are no down sides to having so much power in the MMA world consolidated under one Las Vegas roof, it’s moves like this that remind us of the considerable upsides.
If Strikeforce were still its own, independent organization, sure, that would make for better negotiating positions for fighters. It would give them more options, especially in the early or late stages of their careers (see also: Dan Henderson).
At the same time, then we’d probably never see Diaz fight St. Pierre. We’d probably never get a chance to find out who the best welterweight fighter in the world was. We’d just guess and speculate and argue, which is what we’ve been doing for the past few years, and – honestly? – I think we’ve gotten all the fun we’re going to get out of that exercise.
That was the old business as usual. This is the new one. And while it’s not without its potential pitfalls, so far there’s also a lot to like.
Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive, NewsAt UFC 130, Dana White didn’t sound very confident that he would be able to put together the much talked about Nick Diaz vs. Georges St-Pierre super-fight. However, on Wednesday afternoon, the UFC president ann…
At UFC 130, Dana White didn’t sound very confident that he would be able to put together the much talked about Nick Diaz vs. Georges St-Pierre super-fight. However, on Wednesday afternoon, the UFC president announced the fight was a done deal and would take place at UFC 137 on Oct. 29 in Las Vegas.
MMA Fighting spoke to Cesar Gracie, Diaz’s manager and trainer, about how the deal was completed and what this means for Diaz’s Strikeforce future.
A transcript of the conversation can be found below.
Ariel Helwani: How did this deal get done?
Cesar Gracie: We just sent the contract yesterday and it arrived in their office today.
Is Nick now a UFC fighter?
You know what? That’s an interesting question and they have not told me how they’re going to structure that.
So is his Strikeforce belt on the line?
I don’t know. I truly don’t. They haven’t told me if his belt is on the line. I don’t think so. This is not like that because if his belt was on the line that would make GSP the Strikeforce champion (if he wins). And then what? He’s going to fight someone from Strikeforce? I don’t think that’s happening. But then again, refer to Dana on that one because I truly don’t know.
Did Nick sign a one-fight deal with the UFC or a longer one?
We have a new deal. Multi-fight, multi-year contract with the UFC.
How many fights is the new contract for?
I can tell you it’s a multi-fight, multi-year contract. I can’t tell you how many fights.
So it sounds like he is a UFC fighter now.
Right, but the contract does give the option to fight in Strikeforce. So what that opens up is the potential for him to also fight in Strikeforce.
Over the weekend, Dana White referred to some issues which were stopping this fight from being made. Do you know how those were resolved?
There was a lot of misinformation — there were a lot of reports out there that weren’t true. Showtime, I don’t think was a problem, to be honest with you, at all. They don’t have a contract with Nick. Nick’s contract is strictly with Explosion [Strikeforce’s parent company prior to the Zuffa purchase]. It has never been a contract with Showtime. So the reports you heard were erroneous and false. Other than that, the hurdles were the [Jeff] Lacy thing, stuff like that. I don’t know if they were Strikeforce, and if they were, Nick signed a new contract that dissolved his old contract with Strikeforce.
Do you know if Showtime is getting any kind of percentage of the pay-per-view?
No idea.
Any idea why Vegas was chosen as the site of the fight?
There were two venues they were looking at: one was in Canada and one was in Vegas. We didn’t know which one it was going to be until today.
Would you have been OK with fighting in Canada?
I did tell them it would be better if we fought in Vegas, obviously, because then the belt wouldn’t have very much further to go once Nick gets it (laughs).
Do you think this marks the end of Nick’s run in Strikeforce?
Hopefully. If he’s back in Strikeforce, I would imagine that’s because he lost his next fight.
LAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to trainer Firas Zahabi on Thursday about the Miguel Torres vs. Demetrious Johnson fight at UFC 130 and Torres evolution as a fighter since joining Tristar. Zahabi also talked about the possibility of seeing Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz in the near future.
LAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to trainer Firas Zahabi on Thursday about the Miguel Torres vs. Demetrious Johnson fight at UFC 130 and Torres evolution as a fighter since joining Tristar. Zahabi also talked about the possibility of seeing Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz in the near future.
One of the interesting subplots of the 
It’s hard to imagine it now, but back when UFC president Dana White first used the phrase 
At UFC 130, 
LAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to trainer