George St-Pierre's contract 'termination' a familiar story, but maybe this time with a different ending

Georges St-Pierre is no longer a UFC fighter. So he says, anyway. So his lawyers have told him.

After extended negotiations for a return to the cage, St-Pierre (25-2 MMA, 19-2 UFC) says his team gave the UFC a deadline which went unheeded, and now his contract is terminated. The way these things have usually gone in the past, this isn’t so much the end of the conversation as the beginning of a new one.

There may be some jobs you can quit by uttering the right combination of words, but as Randy Couture found out when he tried to “resign” as UFC heavyweight champion back in 2007, severing ties with the UFC is rarely that simple. Usually it’s a good way to end up in a legal battle, which may very well be the goal here.

And wouldn’t that just be too dumb? Wouldn’t it seem so incredibly avoidable? And for a company that likes money as much as the UFC does, wouldn’t be so counter-productive to go to court with the guy rather going back into business with him?

The answers are yes, yes, and yes, but apparently we’re doing this anyway. There’s at least a glimmer of hope that maybe this time the outcome will be different. Or, at least, maybe this time we’ll finally get some closure on the matter.

What usually happens when fighters challenge promoters in court is a whole lot of nothing. Motions filed. Documents discovered. Then eventually the fighter realizes that time is not on his side and a settlement starts to sound like a good idea. The only ones who make out in the end are the lawyers.

But if there’s anyone who’s uniquely positioned to see this through to the end, it might be “GSP.”

He doesn’t need the money. He isn’t reliant on a speedy resolution. If he never fights again, you get the sense it wouldn’t be a tragic loss in his life. He’s already the greatest welterweight of all time, and possibly the greatest mixed martial arts fighter ever. If he wants to add to his legacy, challenging the legality of a UFC contract might actually be one of the best ways to do it.

What it comes down to, of course, is money. But it’s also about the dissonance between the old UFC and the new, and in more ways than one.

When St-Pierre signed his last contract, there was no Reebok deal to tell him what to wear inside the octagon. There wasn’t even an anti-doping program asking for information on his whereabouts 24 hours a day. It was that old UFC that St-Pierre “stepped away” from in 2013, but it’s a very different one that waits for him three years later.

St-Pierre’s position is relatively simple. He signed a deal with the old UFC. If he’s going to fight for the new one, he needs a new contract to go with it. Talks on that front have stalled, and according to St-Pierre, the new ownership group headed by WME-IMG had a hand in stalling them.

“I think we were close to an agreement toward the end, until the big news arrived, and the news was the UFC had gotten sold to new owners,” St-Pierre said on “The MMA Hour” on Monday. “We were told that everything was put on ice until the new owners take charge. … (Former UFC CEO) Lorenzo (Fertitta)’s offer was off the table, so it was like a shock for us, because we felt we were making progress.”

If that’s a sign of things to come in the WME-IMG era, it’s a troubling one. St-Pierre was one of the most bankable stars the UFC. He was “the king of pay-per-view,” according to UFC President Dana White, the kind of guy you could “build your business around.” And with a pay-per-view event slated for Toronto in December, it would have been nice to have the Canadian superstar back in the fold.

But after paying $4 billion for the UFC, maybe WME-IMG couldn’t stomach the thought of paying a little more for a fighter whose contractual rights it thought it already owned. Instead, it wants to butt heads in public with one of the most revered figures in the sport, which seems like the perfect way to get off on the wrong foot with fans and fighters alike.

Is St-Pierre worth a little extra money now for the return at the box office later, particularly in the flagging Canadian market? Definitely. Is his request to revise his contract a reasonable one, considering all the new restrictions he didn’t agree to and didn’t get a say in? Absolutely.

Is it a good idea to go to court with the rare fighter who has the time and the war chest to see it through? Probably not. Definitely not now, with discord spreading like ringworm through the UFC roster.

This would be a less than ideal outcome under the best of circumstances. But when you consider the alternative is making a bunch of money by working with and not against one the sport’s precious few proven stars, then it’s just baffling.

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