Former two division UFC champion Georges St. Pierre announced his retirement from professional MMA competition earlier this year.
Ben Askren believes that if GSP did get a long desired fight against UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, it would be a win for GSP.
“I would lean towards GSP for sure. The one thing that’s hard, if you watch GSP, he definitely gets tired and when he gets tired, he relies more on his ability to go get the takedown and hold them down and then they can’t do anything against him,” Askren said in a Facebook Live interview with Dan Hardy (via Abhinav Kini of The Body Lock).
GSP had sought an opportunity to fight Nurmagmedov, but the UFC brass denied it due to GSP’s history with relinquishing titles.
Askren would also be interested in the fight to see if GSP can handle the high level wrestling of Nurmagomedov.
“We’ve never seen him against someone who — you can say Josh Koscheck was a high-level wrestler — but Josh Koscheck didn’t always use his wrestling in MMA. He wasn’t like a Khabib or me who someone that uses a lot of wrestling. So we never got to see GSP versus that super high-level wrestler so it’s always curious to me how it would have turned out,” says Askren.
If the bout had come together and the lightweight title was on the line, it would’ve given St. Pierre an opportunity to be the first UFC fighter to hold three titles in three different weight classes.
