Georges St-Pierre suffered an eye injury earlier this year, which is why he cannot fight until later in 2017.
St-Pierre, speaking at the C2 Montreal conference, disclosed the injury.
“Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks, ‘Hey, I’m going to make everybody wait for me. I don’t want to fight during the summer, I want to take my time,” GSP said (thanks to MMA Fighting for the comments. “That’s not the reason. If it were up to me, I would come back. The reason is I had a problem with my eye. I had an injury.
“My vision has not been back yet. It will be back. It’s something very minor. The doctor insisted for me that I don’t spar until September.”
It was expected upon announcing his plans to fight again that the former UFC welterweight champion would challenge Michael Bisping for middleweight gold. Originally, the UFC wanted to book the bout in July, but the fall appeared more likely before scrapping the fight completely.
“But UFC knew. Everyone knew. The people concerned knew that that was the case, but they still tried to put pressure on me to fight in July. That’s the reason why I’m coming out public today about the reason why I’m not fighting this summer,” he said. “I always said that if I was coming back to fight, it needed to be a fight that excites me. I wanted to fight Michael Bisping because I wanted to fight someone that could elevate me. Michael Bisping is the champion now, and I think that he could elevate me as much as I could elevate him. I’m taking a huge risk coming back. I’m putting my legacy on the line.”
