Georges St-Pierre: 'Very minor' eye injury UFC knew about is what's delaying comeback

There was near-universal excitement when we found out in March that Georges St-Pierre was making a UFC comeback after nearly four years of retirement.

Sure, it didn’t sit well with some that St-Pierre (25-2 MMA, 19-2 UFC), the former longtime UFC welterweight champion, would throw the middleweight division into disarray to challenge Michael Bisping for the title. But still, Georges St-Pierre, one of the greatest – if not the greatest – of all time, was coming back!

When? We weren’t sure, but the UFC had aspirations of making Bisping-GSP the main event of International Fight week at UFC 213 on July 8. It made perfect sense, but then St-Pierre stalled … and stalled … and stalled … until posting a video telling Bisping he would be ready to fight anytime after October.

That’s when UFC President Dana White pulled the plug on the fight. And now we know the real reason for all this drama, which St-Pierre revealed Friday at the C2 Montréal conference.

Via MMAFighting.com:

“Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks, ‘Hey, I’m going to make everybody wait for me. I don’t want to fight during the summer, I want to take my time.’ … That’s not the reason,” St-Pierre said. “If it were up to me, I would come back. The reason is I had a problem with my eye. I had an injury.

“My vision has not been back yet. It will be back. It’s something very minor. The doctor insisted for me that I don’t spar until September.”

That’s interesting, considering we saw a chunky-looking GSP kind of, sort of sparring during a photo shoot last month.

In any case, St-Pierre went on to say he told the UFC about his bad eye and that, despite the information, the promotion still wanted to go on with the press conference to announce the Bisping fight.

“The UFC was aware of it,” St-Pierre said. “They knew I couldn’t fight during the summer, but they still insisted on doing that press conference with Michael Bisping. And when it happened, we were not very excited about the idea, but we wanted that fight, so we decided to do it, but then it turned into a negative thing because it took so long.

“But UFC knew. Everyone knew. The people concerned knew that that was the case, but they still tried to put pressure on me to fight in July. That’s the reason why I’m coming out publicly today about the reason why I’m not fighting this summer.”

What a mess. This would’ve been good to know before St-Pierre acted like he needed so much time to prepare following a lengthy layoff. Then he wouldn’t have seemingly ruined all the goodwill he built up with fans over the years.

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