‘Retired’ Georges St-Pierre leaves door open for potential UFC comeback — ‘We’ll see’

You know what would be great? If an athlete retired and said, “Fuck this shit, I’m out of here and I don’t care how much you offer me, I’m never coming back.”

Kind of like this.

Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, who was last seen wearing gold at 185 pounds, retired from mixed martial arts (MMA) this week, bringing an end to one of the greatest runs in the history of the promotion.

“Rush” (26-2) was hoping to secure a lightweight title fight against reigning 155-pound kingpin, Khabib Nurmagomedov, but promotion president, Dana White, is no longer interested in one-off money fights that hold up a division.

That said, there are no absolutes in sports, and there's a chance something could happen that would leave “The Eagle” without an opponent when he makes his UFC return in November. After all, Tony Ferguson gets hurt simply by standing on his hind legs and Conor McGregor is too busy planning his next cruise.

So what would happen if White called St-Pierre with an offer to fight Nurmagomedov for the lightweight title?

“I don’t know ... it’s like a business offer,” St-Pierre told reports at today’s press conference (watch it). “When you make a business offer, it’s now. You take the business offer, yes or no. You can’t say in a few months, ‘Hey, your business offer? Finally I want to accept it.’ No, it was now, you take or you refuse. That’s how you do business. MMA is a business game too.”

White was willing to meet St-Pierre somewhere in the middle and proposed a scenario where “Rush” came back and beat a Top 5 contender, which then in turn would guarantee him the next crack at the 155-pound crown.

St-Pierre, meanwhile, believes he’s already done enough (and earned enough) in his career to jump the line.

“I don’t know where I will be, mentally, the state of mind, in my life, in a few months,” St-Pierre said. “I don’t know. For me, it’s retirement now. I don’t want those other guys to call me out, because I’m out. If something happens and Dana calls me back with something interesting, we’ll see. Like a movie scenario, ‘Oh! He’s coming back!’ We’ll see, but right now I’m not thinking about it.”

Note to Tyron Woodley: No more call outs!

“Georges has cemented his legacy as one of the pound-for-pound greatest fighters ever,” White said. “He beat all the top guys during his welterweight title reign and even went up a weight class to win the middleweight championship. He spent years as one of the biggest names in MMA and remains one of the best ambassadors for the sport. He put Canada on the MMA map.”

While St-Pierre told reporters he’s leaving UFC on good terms, and that White was still his friend, they’ve certainly had their ups and downs when it came to business. Mostly downs, but that’s what happens when the promotion is run by ANCIENT ALIENS.