When a normal fighter announces their return in their mid-30s after nearly a four-year hiatus, it’s usually not a cause for celebration.
However, Georges St-Pierre isn’t any normal fighter.
Aside from being arguably the greatest mixed martial artist to ever grace an Octagon, the one thing that made fans more hopeful that he would be successful upon returning is his work rate. He’s an absolute animal in the gym.
All we ever here about GSP from his Tri-Star teammates is how much time he spends putting in the hard work in the gym. As a life-long martial artist and a fitness freak, even when not competing, we were told he was constantly improving his game and working on his condition.
Then this photo started doing the rounds on the internet, and our whole world was turned upside down.
The former welterweight king is set to take on Michael Bisping for the middleweight championship later in the year. Although Dana White has recently said this fight was off, the fact that an interim middleweight title fight between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker has been booked seems to suggest that it will probably still happen.
This fight will mark GSP’s 185 lb debut and that photo appeared to show him cultivating some serious mass in order to make sure he’s ready for the heavier division. When he saw the photo, Bisping scored a double-whammy dig on ‘Rush’ during his Believe You Me podcast.
“I don’t know what’s going on, to be quite frank. But, he looks like he has been impregnated by an alien.”
One stone, two bird-sized coffins. This was not only a jab at GSP looking a bit like Family Guy’s in-shape, out-of-shape guy from the 50s, but also his eh… interesting anecdotes about spotting UFOs.
On Monday’s MMA Hour, GSP finally gave his response to the photo as well as Bisping’s epic put-down. He saw the funny side, admitting he hadn’t got a clue why he looked so unfit in the photo.
“I don’t know, I saw that picture and it’s disgusting. (laughs) Oh my God!”
“People are asking me, ‘Did you took (sic) this picture on purpose?’ I’m like, ‘Man, I have no idea when this picture came out.’ It’s terrible! This is really bad. I have no idea. I must have been inhaling or whatever. It looked terrible… terrible. Maybe the light make it look bad. I have no idea. It’s crazy. It is really, really crazy.”
When asked how his physique is looking now, GSP explained that he was in phenomenal shape. For those of who are interested, he also claimed to be walking around somewhere between 195 and 197 lbs.
“No, no (my belly’s not that big). I just did a photo shoot this morning. It’s fine. I’m in the best shape of my life right now.”
