Georges St-Pierre believes there is no such thing as being the GOAT.
Many consider the former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion to be one of the best fighters to ever compete. Yet, for the Canadian, he says no one is the GOAT as there is always someone who can beat you.
“I don’t think there is nobody that is the greatest,” St-Pierre said to ESPN’s Ariel Helwani (via MMAFighting). “Let me explain that to you. There is three guys, right? This guy will beat [that] guy, [that] guy will beat [the other] guy, and [the other] guy will beat this guy. That’s how it is in this game. . . It’s just a matter of timing. Everybody can beat everybody on any given day. You make a fight against a top guy 10 times, the guy will probably not win it 10 times. Depending on the situation, he might win nine out of the 10. And style makes fights, too. There are guys that have your number – you don’t know why. In the fight game, it’s not a straight line.”
Why St-Pierre doesn’t believe in the GOAT talk is the fact anyone can beat on any given day. He also knows there will always be someone better than you out there no matter what.
“When I was young, I wanted to be the best of all time but when I got older and had more experience, I realized it’s just a fugazi – it doesn’t exist,” St-Pierre said. “You cannot be the best fighter on the planet. There will always be one guy that will beat you. I know some people say, ‘No that’s not true’ but if you train with many different training partners, with different people, you’ll find out it’s true. There’s guys better than you maybe who are not fighting but if you fight them in the gym you’ll see they are gonna beat you. It’s like that. That’s how the world works. There’s no better guy. There will always be one guy that will have your number, will beat you. That’s how it is. There is no better guy. Any given day, one guy will be better than the other.”
Even though St-Pierre ended his career as the middleweight champion he says he was not the best middleweight in the world. Instead, he was just better than Michael Bisping on that night.
“When you fight a guy and you’re champion, you’re champion because you only beat that guy, that night,” St-Pierre concluded. “It doesn’t give you the right to put you above all the rest of the roster. That’s how most people see it but that’s not how I see it, myself, right now. Before that’s how I used to think but now I realize it’s all an illusion.”
