Georges St-Pierre, who held championship titles at both welterweight and middleweight, is considering adding yet another strap to his collection by dropping to lightweight, even if it’s a one-off like his submission win over Michael Bisping at UFC 217.
Deciding to make a run at 155 pounds was the easy part.
The hard part was actually finding a suitable opponent and to date, St-Pierre has not been presented with a name that does something for his legacy. Rumors of a Nate Diaz fight started to heat up a few weeks back, but “Rush” insists that bout is a no-win situation.
From his conversation on the Joe Rogan podcast:
“If I win decisively, and it’s a war back and forth, people will say, ‘Ah, he sucks.’ If I get beat? Oh my God, forget it. For my legacy it’s the end of the work I put in. It’s finished. And I could have a bad day. I want to do something that … at 155, I never did it before. The title, or beating a certain guy that’s on the rise. It could be Khabib (Nurmagomedov), (or) if there’s another guy that is unbeatable. If I come back like, ‘Georges is never going to beat him.’ You say never, I’m going to love it. When Dana said I would never come back, it excited me. If it’s never been done before, and it means if I do it, that will excite me. There’s a lot of things that turn me on in life. It’s women, dinosaurs and this. That really makes me go crazy.”
The obvious choice for a St-Pierre comeback — at least in terms of pay-per-view (PPV) bucks — would be Conor McGregor, but “Notorious” lowered his stock by surrendering the division title earlier this year.
And let’s not forget that other baggage.
As for Nurmagomedov, he’s expected to return to action later this year, though a definitive title contender has yet to be established. Not just because of the “Notorious” mess, but also because the rapidly-recovering Tony Ferguson is still at the top of the pecking order.
Still lots of pieces to the 155-pound puzzle.
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