Georges St-Pierre Admits If He Goes To 185lbs To Face Anderson Silva, It’s A Permanent Move

Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre

Following another dominant performance, it didn’t take long for the questions about Georges St-Pierre moving up in weight class to challenge pound-for-pound king Anderson Silva in what could possibly be the biggest fight in UFC history

For a long time, UFC president Dana White has skirted the subject simply because there were a myriad of challengers for each fighter in their own weight classes, and it didn’t make sense for them to fight right away. While Silva still has a challenge in February against Vitor Belfort and St-Pierre has Jake Shields waiting in the wings for him, the megafight can’t be ignored.

White didn’t throw water on the idea at the UFC 124 post fight press conference, but he also didn’t sound overly enthusiastic about the idea either.

“I say it all the time, I truly believe that my job is to give people the fights that they want to see. The fights that they want to pay for,” said White. “We’ll see what happens.”

With that statement, UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre then added that if he goes up to 185lbs to face Silva, that would be the end of him at 170lbs.

The Canadian champion has talked in the past about if he went up in weight putting on extra size to compete at 185lbs, but on Saturday night in Montreal he says if he went up to middleweight that would be the last move he’d make.

“This question is a little bit complicated. Because if I go up in a weight class, I’m going to have to put muscle on my body because I’m going to be too small for 185,” said St-Pierre. “If I put muscle on my body and I go up to 185, I’m going to have to stay at 185. I don’t want to go up and down because when you go up and down, you see what happened to Roy Jones (Jr.) it messed up the reaction time.

“Boxing and mixed martial arts are different weight classes. In boxing I think it’s 8lbs and in MMA it’s 15lbs. Playing with your weight, you need to be careful with that.”

St-Pierre may be looked at as one of the most physically gifted athletes to ever compete in MMA, but he also may be the most cerebral. Time and time again, he thinks about the long term goals he has in the sport, and if he does something he wants to do it the right way.

Talking about his weight going into the fight Saturday night, St-Pierre knows what it would take to get up to fight at middleweight, but that would also mean no more welterweight fights for him in the future.

“Right now, I’m about 189/190 and there was a time when I fought Thiago (Alves) like a year ago, I was lighter I was like 184 so I decided to gain weight, to do a diet to gain more muscle mass to go up to 190. If I go fight at 185, I think I should put myself at, at least 200lbs because the guys who fight at 185, and I train with a lot of 185lber’s and they’re all like 215/210 and I think I would have to get bigger,” St-Pierre commented.

While many would look at St-Pierre vs. Silva as a super fight for the ages, the Canadian believes if he goes up in weight it’s not going to be a short term project for one fight. It’s going to be a career goal, and something that he’s going to have to think about before just jumping head first into.

“If I want to go up, I’m going to stay up. I don’t want to play up, down, up, down,” St-Pierre admitted.

Obviously with the fight from Saturday still fresh in his mind, St-Pierre won’t make any decisions right now, but from the sound of things it might be a while before fans could expect him to face Anderson Silva in the UFC.

“I’ll see, I just finished my fight,” said St-Pierre. “I have not even considered that question.”