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Kamaru Usman mimicked St-Pierre for Johny Hendricks’ fight camp: ‘I was doing Georges better than Georges’

Kamaru Usman mimicked St-Pierre for Johny Hendricks' fight camp: 'I was doing Georges better than Georges' Kamaru Usman never had the chance to step inside the Octagon with UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre, but…

Kamaru Usman never had the chance to step inside the Octagon with UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre, but that didn’t stop the ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ from trying to become him.

During a recent appearance on the Pound 4 Pound podcast, Usman (who hosts the show alongside former two-division champion Henry Cejudo) revealed to St-Pierre that he was Johny Hendricks’ main training partner ahead of Hendricks’ epic encounter with ‘Rush’ at UFC 167 more than a decade ago.

Going into the fight, Hendricks had won six straight and was looking to end St-Pierre’s dominant reign over the welterweight division. Usman, who had just kickstarted his own mixed martial arts career on the regional scene, was brought in to mimic GSP throughout Hendricks’ training camp.

“I actually studied you a lot even before I was actually, I think, in the UFC,” Usman told St-Pierre. “I studied you because when you fought — I don’t know if I told you this — when you fought Johny Hendricks, I was brought in, I was his main sparring partner at one point. I was brought in to mimic you. So I watched you a lot going in to help Johny Hendricks. … I had to commit.

“I thought I was doing Georges better than Georges. I’m throwing the Superman-low kick, I’m throwing all these things out. I’m shooting on him, I’m trying to take him down, because I knew you would try to take him down. It didn’t matter what his credentials were, Johny Hendricks is a [wrestling] champ, but I knew you would try to take him down. So I’d been studying you for a while” (h/t MMA Fighting).

To Usman’s credit, Johny Hendricks gave St-Pierre one of the toughest tests of his career. Hendricks came up short via a razor-close split decision. More than a decade later, pundits still argue that Hendricks did more than enough to unseat ‘Rush’ and claim the 170-pound crown.

However, Hendricks would go on to win the welterweight title four months later following St-Pierre’s first retirement from the sport.

Kamaru Usman Praises Georges St-Pierre

Over the years, St-Pierre’s historic reign has been compared to that of Kamaru Usman, who took the belt off Tyron Woodley at UFC 235. Usman never came close to matching GSP’s still-standing record of nine straight title defenses, but Usman does own the record for most consecutive wins in the division at 15 — a streak that ran from July 2015 to August 2022.

The ‘Nigerian Nightmare’ praised St-Pierre during their time together, noting the similarities in their pre-fight rituals. Specifically, the act of isolating themselves before a fight to focus on being mentally prepared.

“That is so surreal that you say that because I’ve never heard you say that, but I’m like — and I wasn’t taught these things — I do almost similar,” Usman said after listening to St-Pierre talk about his process before fighting. “Unfortunately, I lost the fight, Edwards, the second fight, because that fight I just had a lot of stress on me. But I was in the bathroom and I’m in the mirror and I was walking back and forth. I’m looking at the mirror because I’d look and I put myself in the scenario, and I’m talking to myself, but even before that, I do do that in my faceoff.

“That’s why most people, when they bring you back in, because most of us were main events for our last few fights, I’m sitting there, I’m crouched over, I’m talking in my head. They don’t hear me, but I’m talking in my head and I’m talking to the guy in my head, and then we back up and then it’s time to go. But it’s a mental process and I’m in this process the whole time and I think a lot of it has to do with preparation. It comes from preparations.”

Georges St-Pierre Claims UFC Prevented Drug Testing Ahead Of UFC 167

Georges St-Pierre is claiming the UFC told Johny Hendricks to refuse drug testing in the lead-up to their title bout. St-Pierre and Hendricks met in the main event of UFC 167 for the welterweight championship back in 2013. It was a back-and-forth affair that eventually saw ‘GSP’ declared winner by split decision. Many believed Hendricks […]

Georges St-Pierre is claiming the UFC told Johny Hendricks to refuse drug testing in the lead-up to their title bout.

St-Pierre and Hendricks met in the main event of UFC 167 for the welterweight championship back in 2013. It was a back-and-forth affair that eventually saw ‘GSP’ declared winner by split decision. Many believed Hendricks had done enough to earn the victory, and calls for a rematch rang out through the MMA community. However, it was not to be, as St-Pierre would announce his retirement shortly there after.

One of the main reasons St-Pierre cited for his decision to walk away from the sport was a lack of any sort of official drug testing policy being put into place. Now, on a recent edition of the Legend 2 Legend with Burt Watson podcast, ‘Rush’ said that the UFC actively persuaded Hendricks from undergoing drug testing prior to the fight (H/T Sportskeeda).

“I was telling Johny Hendricks that ‘Okay, let’s make drug testing for that fight’ and he agreed in the beginning but the after, he said no,” St-Pierre recalled. “He didn’t want to do it and I’ve learned also that UFC tell him to not do it because they didn’t want to start a trend that people start doing it [drug testing]. I know there’s a lot of good fighters that are honest, that don’t cheat and it would have made a lot of guys that are honest, who think their opponent might be cheating, to do the same trend. They didn’t want that to start so they told Johny Hendricks to not do it.”

It’s a rather bold claim by the former welterweight champion, and, if true, a pretty damning one for the UFC. Stopping your athletes from ensuring that they’re playing on a safe and level field isn’t exactly a good look for a sports organization.

Of course, the UFC would eventually reach a deal with USADA in 2015 to start regularly testing their fighters. That move would eventually pave the way for St-Pierre to make his return to the organization, where he would defeat Michael Bisping for the middleweight championship at UFC 217 in 2017. He would retire once again shortly after that bout and his since enjoyed a successful career outside of the octagon, including appearing in multiple Marvel projects.

Do you believe Georges St-Pierre’s claims that the UFC prevented Johny Hendricks from undergoing drug testing?

Johny Hendricks Officially Announces Retirement From MMA

Johny Hendricks is calling it a career:

The post Johny Hendricks Officially Announces Retirement From MMA appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

The UFC just lost another former champion this week.

Two days after former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans retired on the first episode of ‘Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show,’ former welterweight champion Johny Hendricks announced his retirement on MMAjunkie Radio.

‘Bigg Rigg’ said he was getting out of the sport and returning to his roots to focus on coaching wrestling:

“I’m done. I’m retiring. I’m getting out of the MMA world. I’ve been thinking about this long and hard for a while. I’m going to get back to my roots. I’m going to start coaching at All Saints (Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas). I coached a little bit of high school last year, but I’m going to make the move over to All Saints and start doing those things.”

Hendricks leaves the UFC on a highly disappointing run where he lost five of his last six fights and six of his last eight with the promotion. He won the welterweight title in a “Fight of the Year”-winning war with fellow former champion Robbie Lawler at UFC 171 in March 2014 after narrowly losing to all-time great Georges St-Pierre in November 2013, a bout that remains one of the most controversial decisions ever rendered in a UFC title fight and one many still feel “Bigg Rigg” won.

The former Team Takedown flagship member lost the title in a rematch with Lawler his next time out to the Octagon, however.

He said that he probably wouldn’t even come back for a rematch with St-Pierre, but would return if the UFC offered him a million dollars – a pipe dream that simply will not happen at this point. His goal now to coach high school wrestlers into NCAA national champs like he was at Oklahoma State, “Bigg Rigg” revealed he was telling the UFC and USADA that he was stepping down:

“Even if you threw Georges St-Pierre at me, the world knows (I beat him),” Hendricks said. “Realistically, I’m satisfied unless they say, ‘Johny, here’s a million-dollar payday. Come fight this dude.’ You can’t turn that down. That would be stupid. But everything I set my mind to, I achieved it. That’s the gist of what I’m feeling at this moment and what I’ve been feeling the last month.

“… I’ll call the UFC and tell them I’m done. I’ll call USADA and tell them I’m done. It’s never a honeymoon phase with me. My goal is to get (high school) wrestlers into national champions. I want to get wrestlers better than I was, better than I could ever be. … For me to do that, I have to put the past in the past and start moving forward.”

Hendricks seemed to have few if any regrets, expressing gratitude at those who had helped him achieve what he had and at his view he had accomplished everything he put his mind to.

With that in mind, he recalled an appearance on the exact same radio show nine years ago where he promised he would become UFC champion. After reaching that mountaintop, he said it was time to get back to something resembling a more normal family life:

“I’ve been blessed with people around me to help me get there,” Hendricks said. “What have I done with my life to be satisfied with where I’m at right now? As soon as I started doing that, I knew it was time for me to start doing something else. I’ve been very blessed to accomplish everything I’ve wanted to. Anything I’ve put my mind to, I’ve done it.

“I remember getting on (MMAjunkie Radio) nine years ago saying, ‘I’m going to be the champ.’ Everybody was probably like, ‘Who’s this joker saying he’s going to do this?’ And right now, I know what I have to do to get back to where I want to be. I got the taste of the family life, I got the taste of the normal life, and right now … I’m completely satisfied with everything that’s going on. That’s why I wanted to give it to you first, the MMAjunkie world – is because you guys have been there from the very beginning.”

There’s no reason to criticize a man who believes he accomplished everything he set out to do, and after becoming a UFC champion before suffering his downward run where he was knocked out by Stephen Thompson, Tim Boetsch, and Paulo Costa, there probably isn’t anything he could still accomplish at the highest levels of the UFC compared to what he already achieved.

“Bigg Rigg” was once feared as one of the most powerful knockout artists in all of MMA, and while his dropoff from that point was a precipitous and shocking one, he did hoist gold in one of the UFC’s toughest divisions – even if he never defended it.

Wrestling will be his passion now, and we wish Hendricks all the best in his post-UFC undertaking.

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GSP Reveals His Team Told Him Not To Fight Michael Bisping

Newly-crowned middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre may have successfully defeated Michael Bisping at UFC 217, but before he did, his team was skeptical about how the fight could have played out. In fact, GSP’s team told him outright that it was a bad idea to fight Bisping, the two-time UFC champ revealed to MMA Junkie following […]

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Newly-crowned middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre may have successfully defeated Michael Bisping at UFC 217, but before he did, his team was skeptical about how the fight could have played out.

In fact, GSP’s team told him outright that it was a bad idea to fight Bisping, the two-time UFC champ revealed to MMA Junkie following UFC 217:

“What I’ve done, it’s never going to be taken away from me. It’s something I will keep for the rest of my life. Maybe one day I will go through some negative thing in my life. I will be able to think back about that moment, and it will make me smile. That’s what it is what people don’t understand. I do this to live a moment. I lived a moment.

“I feel very privileged to live that moment. It was a big risk, but bigger the risk, bigger the reward. Even though a lot of people in my entourage told me it was a bad idea, I always trusted my myself and I always believed I was able to do it, and I did it and I’m very proud.”

While the risk may have paid off against Bisping, St-Pierre was realistic in his assessment of the fight game. GSP came out of a four-year retirement to challenge for the middleweight title after a grueling fight against Johny Hendricks back at UFC 167, a fight he won by controversial split decision and also a fight where he left battered and bruised.

With recent revelations regarding brain trauma and concussions, St-Pierre remains deliberately vague when discussing his plans for the future:

“The goal in this game is to retire on top, to not leave too late like a lot of guys like Muhammad Ali,” St-Pierre said. “They made the mistake of believing they were on top, but when you start to get a little bit greedy thinking that you’re special – we’re all human beings, and nobody is invisible. There’s no such thing as being the strongest man. When I was young, I wanted to do MMA because I wanted to be the strongest man. There’s no such thing. I realize now. Everybody can beat everybody on any given day.”

GSP is expected to defend his middleweight belt against interim champ Robert Whittaker sometime in the near future, however, even that is far from certain to happen.

Should St-Pierre continue fighting now that he’s middleweight champion? Or would a brutal loss to a top middleweight like Whittaker, Brunson, or Romero tarnish his historic legacy?

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Georges St-Pierre: The Best Johny Hendricks Is Gone

Former longtime UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre will make his long awaited return to action later this year when he fights middleweight champion Michael Bisping, but it’s been quite some time since the Canadian star stepped foot inside the Octagon, as he hasn’t fought since scoring a highly controversial decision over Johny Hendricks at

The post Georges St-Pierre: The Best Johny Hendricks Is Gone appeared first on LowKickMMA.com.

With St. Pierre now returning, Hendricks, who recently made the jump up to 185-pounds, has shown interest in a rematch, but “Rush” doesn’t feel as if “Bigg Rigg” is the same fighter he once was:

“I believe the best Johny Hendricks I’ve seen is gone,” St-Pierre told the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast with Jim Norton and Matt Serra. “When he fought Jon Fitch, Martin Kampmann, Carlos Condit – when he fought me – I think this Johny Hendricks is gone. I didn’t feel the same pop, the same explosiveness. Maybe he’s going to prove [me] wrong at 185 maybe, but I feel he’s not the same anymore.”

Since losing to St. Pierre in 2013, Hendricks has gone just 3-4, and he lost three consecutive bouts at welterweight before beating Hector Lombard in his middleweight debut last month. While the 185-pound division is currently filled with legitimate contenders, St. Pierre feels as if Hendricks has the ‘tools’ to make another title run:

“We’ll see what’s going to happen with him,” St-Pierre said. “Maybe if he bounces back like before. I believe he has the tools to go back to title contention for 185.”

Do you expect Hendricks to revive his career?

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Video: Josh Koscheck vs. Tyron Woodley From UFC 167 (Full Fight)

https://youtu.be/mYZm1ZOF9Kc

Ahead of his next fight, where he challenges Robbie Lawler for the UFC Welterweight title in the main event of UFC 201, Tyron Woodley is featured in the latest “UFC 201 Free Fight” released by the UFC.

Featured above …

https://youtu.be/mYZm1ZOF9Kc

Featured above is arguably one of Woodley’s most impressive performances inside the Octagon thus far, a vicious knockout of former multiple time UFC title contender Josh Koscheck from the UFC 167 pay-per-view event.

“Tyron Woodley earned a knockout victory against Josh Koscheck at UFC 167. “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler looks to defend his Welterweight title against Woodley at UFC 201 in Atlanta, Georgia. Don’t miss the action live on Pay-Per-View.”

Join us here at MMANews.com on 7/30 for live coverage of the UFC 201 pay-per-view!