Georges St-Pierre names two UFC fighters he wished he faced before retiring

Georges St-Pierre has fought a who’s-who of MMA, but there are two opponents he would have loved to face.

St-Pierre (26-2 MMA, 20-2 UFC), a former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion, holds notable wins over B.J. Penn twice, Matt Hughes twice, Carlos Condit and his final MMA fight against Michael Bisping, when he dethroned the Brit to become UFC middleweight champion in November 2017.

The UFC Hall of Famer widely is regarded as one of the greatest fighters in history, but two superfights alluded him: former UFC middleweight king Anderson Silva (34-11 MMA, 17-7 UFC) and recently retired ex-UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov (29-0 MMA, 13-0 UFC).

“I always wanted to be known as the best and be the best, and there are two fights that never materialized that could have been made – but for certain reasons did not materialize,” St-Pierre said in an interview with Helen Yee. “The first one was against Anderson Silva, and the other one was against Khabib, but for certain reasons it did not happen.”

When asked why those fights never happened, St-Pierre said all parties involved couldn’t come to an agreement.

“When you’re a fighter, you need the two fighters and the promoter to make a fight happen,” St-Pierre said. “Even if the two fighters want, but the promoter doesn’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen. Each fighter brings their terms that they want, then they negotiate, and then it’s up to the promoter to make that happen. It did not happen for these two guys.”

With St-Pierre being almost five years retired and Nurmagomedov having no intentions of competing in MMA again, St-Pierre is open to a grappling match with “The Eagle.”

“Maybe one day I will do a grappling match, and if it’s for a good cause and it’s well organized, you never know,” St-Pierre said. “Every time I say something like this, people get excited and rumors start. But the truth is that we’re retired, and I’m good where I am, and I’m sure he’s good where he is. And if these fights did not happen, it’s because my side – we had requests, we had conditions and terms that if they would accept the terms, we would be ready to step in and make the fight. But they didn’t reach those terms.

“Fights are made also because of the fans, because of the two guys, the promoter – but also, timing has a lot to do with it. … Anderson Silva and I, and Khabib and I, it’s always a question of timing. If you make this fight today, it’s not going to be the same because we lost the timing.”