Georges St-Pierre – The Element of Freedom

By Thomas Gerbasi
From UFC.com
Fear. It’s a taboo topic in the world of combat sports, one that is quickly whisked away with bravado, clichés, or a disdainful look.

A fighter might say, ‘‘Sure, I get nerves, everybody gets nerves." But to say the ‘F’ word? That’s a no-no.

So when asking UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre if he still gets some butterflies before his fights, you expect him to agree to pre-fight nerves, but the rest comes as a surprise.

“I’m afraid, like it’s the end of the world,” he says, almost chuckling that he would even be asked such a question. “Of course, I get nervous. I always have doubts, I’m always afraid, but that’s what makes someone courageous, when he does something when he’s afraid. When you do something when you’re not afraid, it’s not courage.”

Many would say that there is nothing more courageous than walking up those four steps and engaging in combat with an athlete who has trained to defeat you. So if St-Pierre’s logic is correct, every fighter must have some dose of fear in them before stepping into the Octagon. And he probably is right, but few have come out and said it so bluntly as the 170-pound king.

Maybe it’s because he is the best welterweight in the world, a champion who has avenged his two losses, beaten a who’s who of the sport, and done so in a fashion that his opponent this Saturday night, legitimate contender Dan Hardy, is a decided underdog entering the UFC 111 main event at Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center. So when you’re that good, you can afford to be honest and to speak your mind. Sure, he can admit to being afraid before a fight when he knows damn well that when that bell rings odds are that he’s going to give you a defeat you’d probably like to forget.

And while money and fame are nice, freedom is what everyone really wants, and St-Pierre admits that at 28 years old, he now has what he’s always wanted.

“The good thing is that I have freedom,” he said when asked what the best part of being Georges St-Pierre is. “I do whatever I want whenever I want. I like that freedom and the direct relation that the harder I train, the better the results are.”

Unfortunately for his opponents, he trains harder than most and when he says that he can do whatever he wants when he wants to do it, that doesn’t mean ordering a cheeseburger at all hours of the night, it may just refer to his performances in the Octagon.

But you won’t hear him say that; he remains humble and self-effacing to a fault, and even Hardy, a notorious subscriber to the art of mental and verbal warfare, hasn’t gone on the offensive at GSP like he has for previous fights. Has this surprised the champion?

“If he says bad things about me, I’m gonna answer, I’m not a victim,” he said. “But I always respect my opponents. It’s my mentality that to do this job you have to go through a lot of obstacles to reach where you are right now, and I have a lot of respect for that.”

St-Pierre also has a lot of respect for Hardy, in spite of what the oddsmakers may say.

“He’s the most dangerous guy that I’ve fought so far in my career because he’s underrated and he has nothing to lose,” said St-Pierre.

It’s a statement that the pride of Montreal has repeated throughout the lead-up to Saturday’s bout, but it has come under some scrutiny - not because of Hardy’s qualifications, but because the list of fighters on St-Pierre’s resume include BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, Jon Fitch, Thiago Alves, Matt Serra, Josh Koscheck, etc.

St-Pierre sticks to his guns though, and he has good reason to treat Hardy like King Kong.

“I just have to remember what happened to me when I fought Serra the first time,” he said. “I don’t want it to happen twice.”

The first fight with Serra is the lightning rod for all opponents of St-Pierre since that Texas night in April of 2007, and perhaps for the man himself. After getting stopped in the first round by the New Yorker and losing his belt, St-Pierre was devastated and he never forgot that feeling. So despite all his success – getting his belt back from Serra, beating Penn in their highly anticipated rematch, and turning back challengers Fitch and Alves in grueling five rounders – he won’t put himself on a pedestal.

“I’m never overconfident, I’m always afraid of losing,” he said. “There’s no such thing as an invincible man and everybody’s beatable.”

Opponents point to such talk, along with his honest assessment of his first loss to fighting hero Hughes in 2004, and the knockout defeat against Serra, as signs of weakness. But what seems to be forgotten are his gutsy effort in victory against Penn in their first fight when he was battered and bloodied for five minutes before roaring back to win, his grace under pressure when he faced and defeated the only man to knock him out – Serra – in front of over 20,000 Montreal fans, and his ability to tough out the win over Alves after tearing his right abductor muscle during the bout.

So perhaps the key to beating Georges St-Pierre isn’t focusing on what isn’t there, but on what is. Maybe Dan Hardy, despite his talk of GSP having a glass jaw and not being mentally tough, is focusing on the fighter in front of him and not on what ifs. If he does, he could become the first British fighter to win a UFC title. If not, you can be sure that St-Pierre is doing the right thing. He’s not thinking about the other contenders at 170 pounds, a run at Anderson Silva at 185 pounds, or trying out for the Canadian Olympic wrestling team.

“Only one fight at a time,” he said. “I just focus on Dan Hardy.”

It’s that simplicity, that singularity of purpose that is the greatest freedom. If you think St-Pierre wants to give that up, you’re gonna have to put up a helluva fight to rip it from his hands.