Rich Hansen's Take
HANSEN: On The Lasting Legacy Of Exiting UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre
Dec 17, 2013 - 12:15:04 PM HANSEN: On The Lasting Legacy Of Exiting UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre

DISCUSS ALL THIS IN OUR NEW MMATORCH FORUM

...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!

By: Rich Hansen, MMATorch Columnist

Georges St-Pierre announced a hiatus form the sport last week, voluntarily (?) relinquishing his UFC Championship in the process. If the man never fights professionally again, St-Pierre will go down as undisputedly the best welterweight of all-time, with the strongest case amongst all of the candidates for the mythical title of "best fighter of all-time."

Best welterweight of all-time, with a strong case for best fighter of all-time. An intelligent and classy man who never once had one public misstep. How's that for a legacy, eh?

The pinnacle of Georges St-Pierre's career can be demonstrated by any of his four successive victories over Matt Hughes (UFC 79, December 29, 2007), Matt Serra (UFC 83, April 19, 2008), Jon Fitch (UFC 87, August 9, 2008), and B.J. Penn (UFC 94, January 31, 2009... although I like to pretend this fight never happened. IT NEVER HAPPENED!!!). This run of excellence was, in my opinion, the best four-fight run of any fighter in the history of the sport. I put it ahead of Shogun's dominating run through Quinton Jackson, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Alistair Overeem, and Ricardo Arona in the 2005 Pride Middleweight Grand Prix, and to me it tops Jon Jones carving up Shogun, Jackson, Lyoto Machida, and Rashad Evans in Jones' first four UFC title fights from 2011 and 2012.

During St-Pierre's run, which began six years ago, he proved to the world that he was the best welterweight of all time by ending his trilogy with Matt Hughes (the only other man on Earth who had an argument for that place in history) one-up. People also forget that St-Pierre took the fight with Hughes on five week notice. Matt Serra pulled out of what would have been his first title defense and St-Pierre was there to prevent Hughes from one last welterweight reign. Even had Hughes defeated Serra and then immediately lost to St-Pierre in his next fight, that's one less title reign that Hughes could have put on his resume, his own claim for the title of best welterweight fighter in history.

Four months after defeating Matt Hughes for a second time in a row, he regained the UFC Welterweight Title by defeating the man who took it from him. St-Pierre, fighting in front of the most raucous crowd in UFC history, a Montreal crowd that was burning to see their hometown hero reclaim his place at the top of the heap, showed the entire world that Matt Serra was merely an interloper to the crown. Not only did St-Pierre dominate every second of the fight, but the furor that he inspired from the partisan Montreal crowd was the beginning of the UFC's most successful era.

Four months after that, St-Pierre successfully defended the title for the first time in his life by slaughtering Jon Fitch with 25 minutes of the best kickboxing Fitch had ever seen. Jon Fitch was a takedown machine who was widely regarded as the second best welterweight in the UFC by that time. Not only that, but due to his reputation of being, how shall we say, putting on fights that were less than aesthetically pleasing to the eye, Fitch was 8-0 in the UFC, which at the time was tied for the longest win streak in the UFC. St-Pierre cut through him like soft butter, and Fitch left Minneapolis a battered mess.

To conclude this run of terror, St-Pierre put his title up against the UFC Lightweight Champ, B.J. Penn. As an unabashed Penn acolyte, I have successfully purged every image of that beating from my mind. But the image which will never leave my memory is the image of a depressed Penn as he stayed on his stool at the beginning of the fifth round. Georges St-Pierre made B.J. Penn's corner throw in the towel, which really sucks because we all know Penn was playing possum and was going to choke him out late in the fifth. And lest you believe that he beat on B.J. Penn at the end of his career (I'm looking at YOU, Messrs. MacDonald and Diaz), B.J. Penn responded to that humiliation by going on the best streak of his own career, thrashing in succession Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez. St-Pierre at this point of his career was the best fighter in the world, with only Anderson Silva and Fedor Emelianenko alongside in the conversation.

At the tender age of 27 years old GSP ended that 13-month run with his place in history secure. St-Pierre then went out and won decision victories over Thiago Alves, Dan Hardy, Josh Koscheck, Jake Shields, Carlos Condit, Nick Diaz, and Johny Hendricks, which only the Shields and Hendricks fights being less than soul-shatteringly dominant. But the fact that St-Pierre went out and didn't finish even one of those fantastic fighters is somehow actually being held against him and his rightful place in history.

At UFC 100, which was the biggest PPV in company history in large part to St-Pierre's presence on said card, St-Pierre won every round on every card against Alves, including a 10-8 from one judge. Alves didn't return to action for more than a year after this pummeling.

At UFC 111, St-Pierre won every round on every card, including a 50-43 and a 50-44 score. People tend to unfairly remember that Dan Hardy was not a credible opponent, yet he was tough enough to survive several submission attempts from St-Pierre.

At UFC 124, St-Pierre had the distinct pleasure of breaking Josh Koscheck's orbital early in the first round, en route to the most lopsided 50-45 (x3) in the history of the UFC. Koscheck wouldn't return to action for nine and a half months after the face-mashing he took at the hands of St-Pierre.

At UFC 129, St-Pierre sold out Toronto's Rogers Centre so quickly that the UFC had to re-configure the building from 42,000 to 55,000 seats, and those extra seats sold out in minutes. He went on to defeat Jake Shields in a less than scintillating fight, actually dropping two rounds on two judges' cards, thanks to a stiff eye poke from Shields.

After a nineteen month long absence to rehabilitate a blown out knee, St-Pierre returned to action at UFC 154 with a ton of questions circling around him. Those question marks were turned to exclamation points as he beat Carlos Condit from pillar to post, only losing one round on one card.

At UFC 158, St-Pierre humiliated Nick Diaz en route to yet another decision where his opponent couldn't take one round on one judges' card. And finally, at UFC 167, St-Pierre escaped Las Vegas with a highly contentious and very controversial split decision victory over the hardest puncher he would ever face, Johny Hendricks.

So if you're going to ask me which one fight encapsulates Georges St-Pierre's career, which one performance best sums up the man, which fight showcased him at his apex, what will be his lasting legacy? It can't be answered. It just can't. The man did everything that can be done. He won an amazing twelve UFC title fights. To put that in perspective, only twenty three men have won twelve or more fights in the UFC. Not title fights, just fights. St-Pierre has nineteen UFC wins, which places him, you guessed it, first in company history. Anderson Silva for all his greatness will need four move wins to move ahead of St-Pierre on that list. Josh Koscheck would need five more wins. Rashad Evans, Frank Mir, and Michael Bisping would need six more. This record is safe for a long time. And St-Pierre got there with only two UFC losses, both in title fights, both avenged. The loss to Matt Hughes was avenged twice. The loss to Matt Serra was avenged so thoroughly that no trilogy was needed.

Georges St-Pierre's place in welterweight history was cemented in early 2009. His place in MMA history was cemented as soundly as possible in the next five years. Simply put, Georges St-Pierre is a warrior that Klingons will be singing about 100 years from now.