Georges St-Pierre ‘Not Sure' He Will Return to the Middleweight Division
Georges St-Pierre may be one and done as a middleweight in the UFC.
Just over a month after St-Pierre defeated Michael Bisping to become middleweight champion, he's now casting doubts that he will ever fight at 185 pounds again, especially after he was hit with a bout of colitis that will keep him out of action for the time being.
While St-Pierre stated numerous times that it was in his UFC contract that his next fight had to take place at middleweight, it certainly appears he's having other ideas right now.
“We'll talk about it, but I'm not sure if I compete I will go back at 185 [pounds]. I don't think so,” St-Pierre told TSN in Canada on Wednesday.
News that St-Pierre may not be returning to middleweight will send shockwaves through the division after he insisted that he would defend the belt after his win at UFC 217 in November.
Now it appears that St-Pierre is feeling the ill effects of gaining so much weight to fight at 185 pounds that he doesn't think his body could handle it a second time.
“Of course in terms of weight, if I want to go back to compete at 185, obviously eating like I did, what I did, I learned from my mistakes. I don't think it's a good thing to do, force myself to eat to gain muscle mass,” St-Pierre said. “I've always been against performance enhancing drugs and I did the natural way. There's no easy way. I did it the hard way and it was to gain weight and to maintain my muscle mass. It was very hard. It was not healthy.
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“I think the body has a natural weight it can perform at its best athletic ability and for me the weight that I am now is my perfect weight.”
Rumors began swirling on Wednesday that the UFC was considering a middleweight title fight in February between interim champion Robert Whittaker and former 185-pound king Luke Rockhold, but the match-up remains far from official.
It's entirely possible the UFC is moving forward with that potential match-up as a reaction to St-Pierre's news that he may not fight at middleweight again.
Add to that, St-Pierre will be out for an undetermined amount of time to deal with his colitis — a condition that causes abdominal pain, inflammation, and severe diarrhea — before plotting his return to the UFC in 2018.
