At UFC 167, Georges St-Pierre faced off against Johny Hendricks in a world title fight, in which after being battered and bruised for 25 minutes, St-Pierre was declared the winner in a controversial split decision.
Many watching felt that Johny Hendricks had clearly taken it, with GSP’s face a being left a mess made of thick welts, deep cuts and swollen contusions. Two judges gave it to the Canadian, and the belt was wrapped around a familiar waist for the umpteenth time.
Standing in the cage post-fight, Georges St-Pierre turned to Joe Rogan and announced his leaving of the sport, and vacating the title. He wouldn’t go as far as saying ‘retiring’, but said he would be gone for a while, and didn’t know when he’d return.
And so, the controversy had merely started with the judge’s decision.
At the post-fight press conference, UFC President Dana White stood and seethed.
“I’m blown away that Georges St-Pierre won that fight,” said White. “And listen I’m a promoter, he’s the biggest pay-per-view star on the fucking planet for me, and I still don’t think he won that fight.”
“You don’t just say hey I’m going to take a while off, and maybe I’ll be back, maybe I won’t. You owe it to the fans, you owe it that belt, you owe to this company and you owe it to Johny Hendricks to fight again.”
White also announced GSP had left for the hospital immediately, and that’s where the tale begins to get murkier, because halfway through the President’s tirade about poor judging and leaving unfairly, out wandered the Welterweight champion.
A few days ago, St-Pierre was a guest on Chael Sonnen’s podcast and spoke out about that night, mentioning that if the UFC brasses behaviour had perhaps been different, his sabbatical may not still be an ongoing one.
Leading up to UFC 167, St-Pierre had tried his hardest to get stricter drug testing implemented for his fight, leading to a farcical period of finger pointing and implicating between himself, challenger Johny Hendricks and Dana White.
Shortly into his ‘sort-of but not retirement’, St-Pierre had said that it was down to a perceived lack of support from the UFC, as well as being fatigued from so many years at the top of the sport led to his leaving.
Today, as a guest on MMAFighting’s MMA Hour, he expanded on the night of UFC 167, and revealed a little bit more about the backstage meeting held between himself, White and UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta.
“I’m not going to tell you exactly what I said,” St-Pierre said. “But I was very pissed off and I used a lot of F words and swearing. I was very angry.”
“They did not support me because of the testing issues for the doping, they did not support me for the anti-doping. And I told them, why they didn’t support for this, and I didn’t understand it. I said “you guys need to wake up, because a lot of people are cheating, and stuff, and it’s a frickin’ joke. You guys are kind of protecting these guys, and it shouldn’t be like that.”
“I was very angry. You know, I was very angry.”
Now, with calmer heads prevailing, St-Pierre believes the UFC weren’t as ignorant as he had previously thought.
“Now that I look back, I know that they [knew],” St-Pierre said. “I’m not stupid, I know it’s business, you spend a million dollars promoting the fight, so they lose a lot of money. It’s not in their best interest to make the test the best testing possible, because they lose money if the fight gets cancelled.”
“They said “oh really? You really think so”, they said that to me, but I do believe they [knew]. I believe they pretend they didn’t know, but they did know.”
Earlier this year, the UFC implemented much stricter drug testing in an alliance with U.S. Anti-doping Agency (USADA) in an attempt to toughen the sport’s attitude towards performance enhancing drugs. Has it affected GSP’s attitude towards the industry?
“It was better than it was, it’ll never be perfect, but it’s better than it was… But is it the best that they can do? I’m not sure about that.”
Of course, just like every time he’s asked, the former champion was non-committal when the topic of a return was broached.
“I don’t even know myself,” St-Pierre said, “It depends on a lot of things. A lot of things. Like I said, I haven’t made my decision, I don’t have to make the decision yet, because I don’t know!”
“I just don’t know, you know.”
