Patrick Cote rose to the ranks of top contender in the UFC’s middleweight division.
So when “The Predator” watches and sees his fellow French Canadian, Georges St-Pierre, compete at 185 pounds, he isn’t sure there is a future there for the current UFC titleholder.
St-Pierre returned from a four-year hiatus to defeat Michael Bisping earlier this month and become a fourth two-division UFC champion.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Bisping,” Cote said on The MMA Hour recently. “I like this guy, he’s a worker, he’s an amazing fighter — but I think that (Georges) had a great opportunity to become champion. But Georges against (Robert) Whittaker, Georges against a big guy like (Yoel) Romero, stuff like that, I don’t know. Georges is a super athlete, but he doesn’t have anything to prove against those big guys, so I think he’s not going to fight at 185 anymore.”
Whittaker, who currently holds the interim title, has been pushing for a unification match with St-Pierre in Australia. Cote fought Anderson Silva for the UFC title back in 2008.
Cote’s feelings towards St-Pierre’s future actually involve GSP hanging the gloves up for good even.
“I think I will not be surprised if (St-Pierre) said, ‘Okay, that’s over. I just wanted to feel that feeling again.’ And you know why I say that, is because it took him so much time to get out of the cage,” Cote said. “He was staying in the cage and he was kind of feeling everything he was able to grab about all the emotion. He was in the cage for almost 20 minutes after the fight, so he was looking away, looking at everything, and he looked like he was grabbing all the energy and just to say, ‘Alright, that was that, I did it. And now I’m not going to miss that anymore.’”
