Georges St-Pierre’s triumphant return at UFC 217 came by way of a third round rear-naked choke over then-champion Michael Bisping
Garry Tonon, the ONE Championship welterweight, and highly decorated grappling sensation, helped St-Pierre in his preparations ahead of the bout at Madison Square Garden earlier this month.
For Tonon, the manner of the Canadian’s victory came as no surprise to him (via MMAFighting):
“Well, I did believe that that was going to be a high-probability circumstance mostly because I felt his skills to get him to the ground were going to be much better than his opponents’,” Tonon told Ariel Helwani.
“And from what I saw in his (St-Pierre) grappling training, he was doing a good job. Most our camp was built around holding Bisping down, one of Bisping’s greatest attributes is his ability to get up after he’s taken down. So the majority of the camp was, ‘alright, we’re going to take this guy down, but how are we going to keep him down and how are we going to do damage when we take him down’.
“We didn’t want to take him down and just have him spring back up, then what’s the point of the takedown, right? So that was a big part of our camp and in seeing that a big part of our camp was we take him down, keep him down, do damage, and get this guy to expose his back – and that’s exactly what happened in the fight – I thought that there was a high probability of that happening.”
