After long discussions with our client Pat Barry over the recent weeks, he has come to the decision that he will be taking an indefinite leave from competing in MMA. The UFC and Zuffa have been very gracious in releasing him from his contract and Pat is very grateful for everything they have done for him and his career.
“Over the past few fights I’ve just had this sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I have stepped into the Octagon and I realize, I DONT WANT TO WRESTLE. Not saying I will never do MMA again, but right now I just want to hit people. MMA and the UFC have been great to me and I will always support the company and the sport. I want to thank all my fans, sponsors and haters for being with me on this journey and I look forward to what future holds.” – HD!
“Pat and I have talked about this for a while now and with recent changes in the landscape of combat sports, he wants to explore some options and try to get back to his roots. He’s going to take a little time to clear his head and then we will explore our options. We will keep you posted on things as they develop.” – Brian Butler
After long discussions with our client Pat Barry over the recent weeks, he has come to the decision that he will be taking an indefinite leave from competing in MMA. The UFC and Zuffa have been very gracious in releasing him from his contract and Pat is very grateful for everything they have done for him and his career.
“Over the past few fights I’ve just had this sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I have stepped into the Octagon and I realize, I DONT WANT TO WRESTLE. Not saying I will never do MMA again, but right now I just want to hit people. MMA and the UFC have been great to me and I will always support the company and the sport. I want to thank all my fans, sponsors and haters for being with me on this journey and I look forward to what future holds.” – HD!
“Pat and I have talked about this for a while now and with recent changes in the landscape of combat sports, he wants to explore some options and try to get back to his roots. He’s going to take a little time to clear his head and then we will explore our options. We will keep you posted on things as they develop.” – Brian Butler
After winning his first three MMA fights by throwing just six kicks, Barry went on to compile a 5-7 record in the UFC. Of those 12 fights, only one went to the judges — his decision win against Joey Beltran in January 2011. Barry also picked up two UFC Fight of the Night bonuses (for his victories against Antoni Hardonk and Christian Morecraft) and two Knockout of the Night bonuses (for the Hardonk win and for his second-round KO of Shane Del Rosario).
Unfortunately, Barry was unable to find consistent success in the Octagon, and never won two UFC fights in a row. Though his submission losses to Tim Hague, Mirko Cro Cop, and Stefan Struve could partly be blamed on his lack of comfort with the ground-game, Barry also suffered knockout losses while trading bombs with Cheick Kongo, Lavar Johnson, and Shawn Jordan. In his most recent UFC appearance at UFC Fight Night 33, Barry was quickly mounted by Soa Palelei and finished with punches from the top.
Instead of taking further lumps as a heavyweight gatekeeper, “Hype or Die” walks away on his own terms, and we hope to see him come back on his own terms someday, perhaps in a major kickboxing league like GLORY. But for now, the man deserves a rest, and some time to spend with the people he loves. Go with God, man-fish…
Another one bites the dust. Martin Kampmann, welterweight warrior and one of the goriest, gutsiest performers in the history of the sport, is “on hiatus” according to what he told MMA Junkie this week. The Dane seems likely to come back, something fans will no doubt rejoice over when it happens given his propensity for […]
Another one bites the dust. Martin Kampmann, welterweight warrior and one of the goriest, gutsiest performers in the history of the sport, is “on hiatus” according to what he told MMA Junkie this week. The Dane seems likely to come back, something fans will no doubt rejoice over when it happens given his propensity for […]
(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)
The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:
“I went to a school where it was pretty rough — I’d get my clothes stolen, my cash. And at home life was pretty hard too. I had a difficult childhood,” said St-Pierre to an interviewer in 2006.
The upshot of these challenges translated into the single quality that defines GSP to this day — his relentless desire to please everybody around him. Not only was St-Pierre an absolute perfectionist with respect to his performance as a fighter, but he actively sought to cultivate positive relationships with all of the people he crossed paths with in life.
In a non-corporate environment, that character trait might have gone over better. In the shark tank of pimps, hustlers and thieves who infest the fight game, it made St-Pierre an easy mark for managers who felt entitled to take his money.
(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)
The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:
“I went to a school where it was pretty rough — I’d get my clothes stolen, my cash. And at home life was pretty hard too. I had a difficult childhood,” said St-Pierre to an interviewer in 2006.
The upshot of these challenges translated into the single quality that defines GSP to this day — his relentless desire to please everybody around him. Not only was St-Pierre an absolute perfectionist with respect to his performance as a fighter, but he actively sought to cultivate positive relationships with all of the people he crossed paths with in life.
In a non-corporate environment, that character trait might have gone over better. In the shark tank of pimps, hustlers and thieves who infest the fight game, it made St-Pierre an easy mark for managers who felt entitled to take his money.
TMZ.com broke the story of St-Pierre being forced to pay out $737,066.35 — and counting — to his former manager Shari Spencer. In a similar vein, GSP’s first manager, Stephane Patry, earned some hard cash after St-Pierre settled over Patry’s lawsuit with him.
“Georges St-Pierre has a lot of money, and he could walk away forever if that’s what he chose to do,” said UFC president Dana White during Friday’s conference call where GSP’s departure was announced to the media.
This statement begs the question — while GSP certainly never banked Mayweather money, how much of a hit did St-Pierre take from paying out 20 percent commissions to Patry and Spencer simultaneously? Will the courts mandate that Spencer gets to swallow up another 20 percent of his revenue for a portion of the time period since St-Pierre’s new co-managers, Rodolphe Beaulie and Philippe Lepage, took over in 2011?
Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, the UFC welterweight kingpin only seemed to discover just who he was dealing with by the time it was too late to do anything about it. Besides the transgressions from his managers, the UFC was happy to control many aspects of St-Pierre’s commercial deals from owning his video game likeness rights in perpetuity to refusing to allow St-Pierre to use UFC footage in the GSP documentary The Striking Truth. These were raw deals that will cost St-Pierre both in terms of his post-retirement earning potential and his reputation for decades to come.
It’s incredibly suspect that two days before GSP’s retirement announcement, Dana White told MMAFighting.com that St-Pierre was signing autographs at a mall. Was the financial hit the UFC would take from loss of pay-per-view, sponsors, and diminishment of the UFC brand in the eyes of television partners like Fox Sports incentive for the UFC to do everything in the organization’s power to retain GSP as champion? With Cain Velasquez out for a year, Chris Weidman as a new champion needing more build-up and lighter-weight champions not drawing big PPV numbers, St-Pierre’s exit couldn’t come at a worse time for the organization.
The most overlooked aspect of St-Pierre’s decision to retire comes down to risk of further traumatic brain injury (TBI). Tim Marchman of DeadSpin.com provided solid analysis that of the 875 strikes GSP has taken in his career, 412 have come in his last three fights. An athlete doesn’t need to be slurring their words or have a poor memory to be suffering the effects of repeated head trauma; depression, bouts of anger, and mood swings can be among the symptoms of TBI.
Georges St-Pierre’s tremendous desire for public validation of his talents was both his greatest strength as a fighter and his greatest weakness in terms of his personal health. He put it on the line for fans, media, and a promoter who were all just as likely to offer scathing criticism as they were to give him praise.
It’s possible that St-Pierre returns to MMA, just as so many other fighters have returned from retirement. In fact, it’s likely that GSP will go stir-crazy on the sidelines and want to restore his past status. St-Pierre will need a strong network of friends and family to pull him back from the brink — but no amount of external validation will overcome any internal dissonance within his soul.
We owe it to Georges St-Pierre to remember his life, career, and legacy as it happened, and not the revisionist or politically correct history that certain stakeholders in MMA might be selling. GSP needs to be remembered exactly as he the person he was: one of the greatest — if not the greatest — MMA fighter of all time.
(“Physically I am 100%, but mentally I cannot go through another training camp right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to.” / Photo via Getty)
Georges St-Pierre‘s impromptu conference call turned out to be incredibly significant after all. The UFC welterweight champion announced today that he is taking an indefinite break from MMA competition, and has vacated his welterweight title. As he explained during his opening statement on the call:
“I’ve been fighting for a long time at a very high level. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of criticism, and I decided to take time off. The UFC is a business, they can’t wait for my little self. I vacate my title for the respect of the other competitors, and one day when I feel like it, I might come back.
“It’s a lot of pressure. Every fight, I’m carrying weight on my shoulder, and every fight you add weight on your shoulder, you add weight, and add weight, and add weight — it becomes so heavy that I can’t carry it myself. Physically I am 100%, but mentally I cannot go through another training camp right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to.”
When Yahoo! reporter Kevin Iole asked St-Pierre if concern about physical damage or head trauma factored into his decision, GSP repeated that his decision had nothing to do with that. “I need to have a normal life for a bit, and that’s it.”
“I believe that one day I will come back,” St-Pierre said later, “but I don’t know [when].”
St-Pierre’s competitive future has been a question mark ever since his controversial UFC 167 victory over Johny Hendricks. Following the win, an emotionally distracted St-Pierre made a vague statement about needing to go away for a while — which drew the immediate wrath of Dana White in the post-fight press-conference. But now that St-Pierre has given more closure to the situation, White is completely supportive.
“This is fighting, and you have to be 100% mentally, physically, and emotionally,” the UFC president explained. “If you’re not, you should wait on the sidelines until you get your stuff cleared up…He was classy enough to say, ‘I’m not going to jam up the 170-pound division while I deal with these things.’ He’s going to deal with his stuff and come back…He’s the greatest welterweight of all time, and he’s the gold standard in everything…I think this is the right move for Georges St-Pierre.”
(“Physically I am 100%, but mentally I cannot go through another training camp right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to.” / Photo via Getty)
Georges St-Pierre‘s impromptu conference call turned out to be incredibly significant after all. The UFC welterweight champion announced today that he is taking an indefinite break from MMA competition, and has vacated his welterweight title. As he explained during his opening statement on the call:
“I’ve been fighting for a long time at a very high level. It’s a lot of pressure, a lot of criticism, and I decided to take time off. The UFC is a business, they can’t wait for my little self. I vacate my title for the respect of the other competitors, and one day when I feel like it, I might come back.
“It’s a lot of pressure. Every fight, I’m carrying weight on my shoulder, and every fight you add weight on your shoulder, you add weight, and add weight, and add weight — it becomes so heavy that I can’t carry it myself. Physically I am 100%, but mentally I cannot go through another training camp right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to.”
When Yahoo! reporter Kevin Iole asked St-Pierre if concern about physical damage or head trauma factored into his decision, GSP repeated that his decision had nothing to do with that. “I need to have a normal life for a bit, and that’s it.”
“I believe that one day I will come back,” St-Pierre said later, “but I don’t know [when].”
St-Pierre’s competitive future has been a question mark ever since his controversial UFC 167 victory over Johny Hendricks. Following the win, an emotionally distracted St-Pierre made a vague statement about needing to go away for a while — which drew the immediate wrath of Dana White in the post-fight press-conference. But now that St-Pierre has given more closure to the situation, White is completely supportive.
“This is fighting, and you have to be 100% mentally, physically, and emotionally,” the UFC president explained. “If you’re not, you should wait on the sidelines until you get your stuff cleared up…He was classy enough to say, ‘I’m not going to jam up the 170-pound division while I deal with these things.’ He’s going to deal with his stuff and come back…He’s the greatest welterweight of all time, and he’s the gold standard in everything…I think this is the right move for Georges St-Pierre.”
St-Pierre also gave more insight into the daily pressures he felt as a UFC star:
“I’ve never been a victim. I choose to do this. But as much as I choose to do it, [now] I choose to not do it. [Fight] promotion, Primetime, the cameras, trash-talk, everywhere I go in restaurants [fans] talk to me about [fighting] all time, it’s completely insane. Right now I need to take a pause…My life, it’s a freakin’ zoo right now.”
Beyond that, GSP was tight-lipped about his future plans, or possible time-frame of return: “You’re not gonna get anything personal out of me, and that’s all.”
That might be all for him right now, but his absence from the UFC means that the welterweight division just got a boost of necessary excitement. After St-Pierre had exited the call, Dana White announced that UFC 171: Jones vs. Teixeira (March 15th, Dallas) would also feature Johny Hendricks vs. Robbie Lawler fighting for the UFC’s vacant welterweight title. [Update:Jones vs. Teixeira has been shifted to UFC 172 in April. Hendricks vs. Lawler will headline UFC 171.] White added that he’s trying to get Carlos Condit on the card as well, though not against the recently-injured Matt Brown. (“We’re going in a different direction,” White said when asked about Brown’s immediate future. Ugh. Tough break, Matt)
In frantic fight-promoter mode, White described Hendricks vs. Lawler as a “gunfight” and a “dogfight,” on the level of “Haglar vs. Hearns.”
So that’s pretty much where we’re at right now. Please pick your jaws up off the floor and tell us how you’re feeling in the comments section.
