Former two division UFC champion Georges St-Pierre has named two fighters that he wishes he could have faced before retiring.
St-Pierre (26-2 MMA), a former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion, faced a plethora of high profile names throughout his storied mixed martial arts career. His list of prior opponents includes legends such as Matt Hughes, BJ Penn, Jake Shields, Michael Bisping and Matt Serra, just to name a few.
While GSP has quite the resume to look back on, there are two opponents he wishes he could have faced before retiring.
“I always wanted to be known as the best and be the best, and there are two fights that never materialized that could have been made – but for certain reasons did not materialize,” St-Pierre said in an interview with Helen Yee (h/t MMAJunkie). “The first one was against Anderson Silva, and the other one was against Khabib, but for certain reasons it did not happen.”
Georges St-Pierre continued and attempted to explain why fights with ‘The Spider’ and ‘The Eagle’ never came to fruition.
“When you’re a fighter, you need the two fighters and the promoter to make a fight happen,” St-Pierre said. “Even if the two fighters want, but the promoter doesn’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen. Each fighter brings their terms that they want, then they negotiate, and then it’s up to the promoter to make that happen. It did not happen for these two guys.”
St-Pierre concluded:
“Fights are made also because of the fans, because of the two guys, the promoter – but also, timing has a lot to do with it. … Anderson Silva and I, and Khabib and I, it’s always a question of timing. If you make this fight today, it’s not going to be the same because we lost the timing.”
