Freddie Roach: ‘If GSP feels he can still fight, he’ll come back’
Georges St-Pierre may be on his way back to mixed martial arts, the sport he shockingly left in 2013 after a grueling victory over Johny Hendricks in a welterweight title fight on Nov. 16, 2013, at UFC 167 in Las Vegas.
Rumors have abounded for a while now that the ex-UFC welterweight champion was getting the itch to return to the sport he once dominated. The latest voice to lend credence to that is Hall of Fame boxing trainer Freddie Roach, a close friend of St-Pierre’s who has worked with him on his striking occasionally over the years.
In an interview with Marcos Villegas of Fight Hub TV, Roach said that St-Pierre showed up at his Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, Calif., and hit mitts for 10 rounds. But it was the discussion after the session on the mitts that is noteworthy for MMA fans.
Roach told Villegas:
So we came up with a process. He’s going to train for a fight. He’s going to have a six-week training camp. At the end of the six weeks, if he feels like he’s ready to fight, and he’s hungry for it like he always has been, he’s going to do it. He would fight one more time.
Now, Roach didn’t say it was a given and went on to say that if St-Pierre doesn’t feel he can reach the level he wants, he’ll stay retired.
Roach:
If he doesn’t feel it and he feels like it’s just not there, he’ll let it go and he’s going to retire. I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s really smart to do that, to see where he’s at in his mind.
The UFC couldn’t get better news if St-Pierre chose to come back. Since he left the sport in 2013, women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey and interim featherweight champion Conor McGregor have become full-blown superstars.
McGregor sold 825,000 pay-per-views at UFC 189, a fight in which he defeated Chad Mendes. Mendes was a late replacement for Jose Aldo, who fell out because of injury.
Less than a month later, Rousey’s 34-second annihilation of Bethe Correia at UFC 190 sold 1 million.
Rousey’s bout with former boxing champion Holly Holm next week at UFC 193 in Melbourne, Australia, is expected to do another big number and could threaten 1 million again. And then McGregor and Aldo will meet in the main event of UFC 194 in a fight that could become the highest seller in the company’s history.
Former light heavyweight champion Jon Jones was reinstated recently from suspension, and he’s expected to do big business in a rematch with Daniel Cormier in which Jones will try to regain the title that the UFC stripped him of after he was involved in a hit-and-run traffic accident in Albuquerque, N.M.
If St-Pierre comes back, he of course would do big numbers and would give the UFC the best lineup of pay-per-view attractions it’s ever had.
