Patrick Cote won’t be surprised if ‘super athlete’ Georges St-Pierre retires from MMA

After winning the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Middleweight title by submitting Michael Bisping in the headlining bout of UFC 217 a few weeks ago, Georges St-Pierre has been non-committal about his fighting future.

Sure, he is contractually obligated to defend his 185-pound strap against interim title holder Robert Whittaker, but in this game things change all the time, and what was said yesterday doesn’t necessarily hold much weight today.

Speaking of weight, his team doesn’t think sticking at Middleweight is the best move due to the extra pounds he has to lug around. Now, his former training partner Patrick Cote has gone on record sharing that sentiment, saying “Rush” has no need to prove himself against bigger men.

“I have big doubts. I don’t have any inside info and we are not close as we used to be, but what he said about that hard thing to gain weight,” said Cote on The MMA Hour.

“I don’t want to take anything away from Bisping, I like this guy, he’s a worker, amazing fighter and he had a great opportunity to be champion, but Georges against Whittaker, big guys like Romero, I don’t know. Georges is super athlete but he doesn't have anything to prove against those big guys. I don’t think he’ll fight at 185 anymore,” he added.

In fact, Cote -- who retired from the sport after his loss to Thiago Alves at UFC 210 and will now focus on the management side of things with his new venture Predator Management -- says St-Pierre could very well retire for good after making history in New York.

“For sure, I would not be surprised if he said, ‘It’s over, I just wanted to feel that feeling again.’ Why I say that is because is took him so much time to get out of the cage. He stayed in the cage and he was kind of feeling everything he was able to grab about all the emotion,” added Cote.

“He was in the cage for almost 20 minutes after the fight, He was looking at everything and grabbing all the energy just to say ‘That was that, I did it and I am not going to miss that anymore.’ This is the feeling I had when I was at MSG. But no, I will not be surprised if he is done with fighting.”

Despite having only one fight in the last four years, Georges stated he wanted to go on vacation and not think about fighting. After all, that anxiety is no joke.

What say you, are all of George’s recent actions and comments hinting at the possibility of “Rush” retiring for good in the near future?