Georges St. Pierre returned after a four year hiatus to capture the UFC Middleweight Title from Michael Bisping in the main event of UFC 217.
Chael Sonnen was one of many who checked out the fight on that night and the fighter says GSP looked like the worst he has ever seen on that night.
“People said, Georges St-Pierre with four years off, he’s not gonna be as fast as he was. Well, he wasn’t. People said he wouldn’t be big enough to just come in underneath a 185-pound Michael Bisping and just take him down like he did everyone else. Well, he couldn’t. He struggled there. People said his timing was gonna be a little bit off, he’d second guess himself after this long layoff. He did. It was the worst Georges St-Pierre I’ve ever seen, but what the world found out is Georges St-Pierre’s skills as a mixed martial artist, there’s a big gap between St-Pierre and the rest of the field. Yeah it was a rusty Georges St-Pierre, maybe a little bit slower. I thought maybe his conditioning wasn’t quite what we used to see. He’s still the best in the world,” Sonnen said on Beyond The Fight.
Prior to UFC 217, the last time fans saw GSP in action was a razor thin decision win over Johny Hendricks at UFC 167.
Sonnen would go as far as to say that the new middleweight champion is the greatest fighter of all time.
“It’s very hard to deny reality. It’s very hard to deny what we’re seeing. It’s very hard to deny a two time world champion in two different divisions that spans back to 2001 and has one loss. One loss since 2001. Beat all of the guys in the previous generation. Beat all of the guys of his generation. Beat all of the guys in the next generation, and left. He comes back four years later, changes weight classes and wins it again. I don’t know what more a guy needs to do. Georges St-Pierre is the greatest fighter to have ever done it,” says Sonnen.
GSP’s next fight has yet to be announced, but UFC President Dana White said a title unification bout against interim middleweight champion Robert Whittaker would be next.
