In the modern era of UFC championship matchmaking, nothing seems to come easy. Even the fights that seemed simple to book – where both people wanted to fight one another – have had their struggles. Frankie Edgar just got pulled from UFC 218 with an injury, Cody Garbrandt vs. T.J. Dillashaw ended up getting delayed before finally happening at UFC 217, and we won’t even discuss what went down with Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones II.
So in that light, Georges St-Pierre’s reaction to his supposedly mandatory title defense against Robert Whittaker is more ‘business as usual’ than it is an exception. St-Pierre stopped by the MMA Hour to talk about his recent win over Michael Bisping, at UFC 217, to capture the middleweight title. And while there, he addressed the potential of unifying the belts (transcript via MMA Fighting).
“I’ll take a few weeks and then I’ll decide,” St-Pierre said. “I have no desire to hold onto the title and freeze the division. That’s not what I want to do.
“There’s a lot of different things that can change. Mixed martial arts is a sport that changes all the time, and like I said, I wanted to come back to make history, to do something that’d never been done before. I know it’s in my contract (to fight Whittaker), but you never know. Dana (White) could come back with some proposition or whatever.
“Dana is the boss, we’ll see what’s going to happen. I just need some vacation now. That’s why I burned out last time, because I was trying to think too much ahead of time. And sometimes when you try to think ahead of time, things that you’re thinking about, you’re wasting your energy because they don’t even happen.”
St-Pierre added that his neck is bothering him from his fight with Bisping, and that he planned to go on vacation and “clear up my head.” For his part, Dana White has been so far insistent that GSP will return to fight Whittaker as his next bout. So, if ‘Rush’ sticks to his sentiment that “Dana is the boss,” that may still be the fight fans get.
However, given his statements above, it doesn’t exactly seem as though the newly minted champion is thrilling for the chance to start taking on top contenders at 185 lbs.
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