On Georges St-Pierre, the fighter with the uncommon luxury of doing what he wants

There are few things less reliable – or, if you prefer, more reliably unreliable – than a pro fighter’s retirement. When it comes to going away and staying gone, seems like almost no one in MMA gets it right the first time.

Not Randy Couture. Not B.J. Penn. Not even, judging from the noise coming out of Stary Oskol lately, Fedor Emelianenko.

But something about Georges St-Pierre gives me hope. Maybe it’s that he resists using the r-word when discussing his current extended sabbatical. As if, as long as he doesn’t have to say it out loud, he can avoid confronting all the hard parts about hanging up the gloves until it’s too late to make a different decision.

There’s also the fact that, when St-Pierre does start talking about why he “stepped away,” he sounds like a person who is almost too reasonable to have ever gotten involved with the crazy, mixed up world of mixed martial arts.

“I became world champion by training for fun,” St-Pierre said in a recent interview. “And then the fun became business, and business became stressful, and then you lost fun. I didn’t have fun at the end. I did it because I had to, not because I wanted to.”

St-Pierre went on to say that, to be honest, he probably should have stopped fighting even sooner, “maybe one fight before or two fights before” he actually did. The reason he didn’t, he said, was because he felt like he couldn’t. There was always another challenge, another fight, and – if we’re being real – another payday.

But St-Pierre doesn’t need the money these days. By all accounts, he’s made enough from fighting, as well as from endorsements and movie roles, that he can comfortably stop earning and focus on spending, if he wants to. That, for a pro fighter, is an uncommon luxury. And the fact that GSP chose to stop when he reached that point – that is, when he no longer had to fight, and could honestly ask himself whether he still wanted to – makes you wonder who else might make the same choice if given the same options.

I find myself wondering about that as I scan the main card for UFC 190 and see a lot of names that are a little too familiar. How could you not, if you’re doing the math and paying attention?

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua

Saturday night’s event in Rio de Janeiro features Mauricio Rua, both Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and his brother Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, as well as Antonio Silva. These four men are a combined 146 years old, with about 130 professional fights between them.

With the possible exception of Silva, who, at 35, is a relative spring chicken in the UFC’s current heavyweight division, they all seem like fighters who are past their expiration date, yet somehow linger like a carton of bad milk you can’t bring yourself to throw out.

Part of why they stick around is because they can. They have the name recognition. They inspire the nostalgia. We’ll watch, which means promoters will pay.

And that’s the other part of why they stick around. There’s still money to be made, and they wouldn’t mind making it. To varying extents, they might even need to make it, just to maintain their current lifestyles.

What if that weren’t the case, though? What if “Bigfoot” Silva woke up tomorrow to discover that he and GSP had switched bank account balances, like some sort of financial “Freaky Friday”? For one thing, I bet it would make St-Pierre more likely to pick up the phone when the UFC called. But for Silva, would he still think it was a great idea to get hit in the head for money on this weekend? Or might he discover other interests he never knew he had?

It’s a complicated question, because fighting is one of those things that’s a weird blend of passion and profession. Few people would do it this much, for this long, unless they were getting paid. And yet, few people begin doing it solely to get paid. It’s that rare job where, in order to be any good at it, you have to think of it as your job before it’s your job. And a job is something you do even on the days you don’t want to do it.

So how are you supposed to know when you should stop doing it? How do you know when the money isn’t worth the sacrifices, and the pain isn’t outweighed by the passion?

Having a whole bunch of money, I suspect, makes it easier to be honest with yourself about these questions. Certainly, the history of pro sports – fighting included – is littered with people who still wanted to do it long after they no longer had to do it, for any financial reason. It’s even more cluttered with people who started doing it because they loved it, kept doing it because they made money at it, then couldn’t stop doing it because they’d spent all that money and knew no other way to get more of it in such large, comfortable chunks.

A guy like GSP? He’s the exception, in almost every sense. He followed his passion, became way better at it than just about everyone else who did the same thing at the same time, and earned enough money to allow himself to honestly reflect on whether he was still enjoying it. Then – and here’s the important part – when he realized the answer was no (or even just, maybe not), he stopped. He refused to be lured back. He moved on with his life. At least, you know, for now.

It’s one of those decisions that, if it even occurs to you to make it, can’t possibly be wrong. If you’re a fighter who doesn’t want to fight – or even just a fighter who thinks he might not want to fight – you shouldn’t. You should stop, for the time being if not forever. It’s too dangerous an occupation to be ambivalent about.

It’s just that, being able to ask the question and be honest with yourself about the answer, knowing that you’ll live comfortably either way, that’s not a luxury most fighters have. Maybe we’d see a lot less of some of them if they did.

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