KD360 Episode 2: Homage to a Hero
First Meditations:
Last week began like any other, the typical grind of work, study and training. There were no signs of what were to come Thursday until I saw a retweet in French appear on my Twitter feed last Wednesday.
The tweet loosely translated to a conference being announced at the Bell Centre (in Montreal, Canada) by hometown hero Georges St-Pierre, where he’ll announce his retirement. The news stopped me in my track. For those who know me on a deeply personal level, they know that St-Pierre, or as he’s commonly called GSP, is my all-time favorite athlete and a hero during my teenage years. While he had been mostly inactive in recent years, competing only once in since November of 2013, it was known he was seeking another contest to help define his legacy, so this was a shocked. Then came Thursday’s press conference where it all became real…
It was bittersweet. To watch my favorite athlete, the man who I propped up as the ultimate example of being an athlete, leave the sport behind was sad. He left on top, having not loss since April of 2007 while picking up an interim Welterweight title, becoming undisputed Welterweight champion, and moving up to Middleweight in his final bout to win the championship there. In combat sports, the legends tend to get spit out on the way out, left broken versions of who they were at their peak. For a man who never followed the mold of the traditional combat sports athlete, Georges bucked that trend, leaving on his own terms with his held high and consecutive championship wins. This edition of KD360 will highlight what St-Pierre means to me.
Witnessing the New Breed
I grew up as a little kid fascinated by martial arts, I was deeply engaged with Bruce Lee and the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I took karate for a very short period thinking I’d immediately do what they were doing, quitting when I didn’t have the understanding of the process required to progress in the art. As I got older, my primary interests shifted to soccer and, for entertainment, pro wrestling. Pro Wrestling, for me, was the closest thing to free form combat sports and it replaced martial arts films and Power Rangers from my early youth as my means of consumption. I eventually was disillusioned watch wrestling, as the scripted nature, whacky characters and storylines removed the pure sporting enjoyment of it for me.
After an episode of WWE one night in early 2005, I didn’t turn my TV off right away to go to sleep and following the broadcast was the initial season of The Ultimate Fighter by the UFC. When watching the bouts, I thought to myself that I was watching a chaotic, but real form of pro wrestling. I started following the UFC and thus the sport of mixed martial arts for a period, but it hadn’t really connected with me yet. I saw some talented guys do cool things and even found some athletes I liked watching, but as a whole, I found it to be mostly sanctioned brawling. Then came November 19, 2005.
UFC 56: Full Force took place on that day, featuring two champions competing in the main and co-main events. The champion in the co-main was Welterweight ace Matt Hughes, who through the broadcasts of UFC events, had built was secondhand goodwill from me, so I’d root for him without knowing much about him. The second bout of the pay-per-view broadcast featured an up-and-comer in Hughes’ division: Georges “Rush” St-Pierre.
When I first saw GSP, I immediately cheered against him for the following reasons: He was established as a threat to Hughes’ title and he was a clean cut, pretty boy built like a elite athlete, giving me a high school jock vibe. His opponent that evening was Sean Sherk, a short, former lightweight who gave me a feel that he was the underdog. I wanted St-Pierre to lose so bad, but I was not prepared for my shift of opinion once the bout began. What initially caught my eye was he entered the arena in what would be his trademark for his entrances through his career: A martial arts headband and a martial arts gi, it was unique for what I thought at the time was just rugged cage fighting. Then, for the first time ever, I saw the “art” in Mixed Martial Arts. He blended karate and kickboxing techniques with pure athleticism that I had never seen before.
St-Pierre outclassed Sherk, outstriking and outwrestling the former championship challenger en route to a second round TKO win. Following the bout came the moment that might have made me a GSP fan. In the post fight interview, St-Pierre took the microphone and dropped to his knees, pleading with the UFC management to award him a rematch with Hughes (GSP lost the first time they faced each other by first round submission while Georges was in his rookie). He spoke with passion and confidence in that interview that’d he’d learned from his mistakes from the first bout and would be better equipped to win if received a second chance for Hughes’ championship title. I was sold.
Almost a year to the day that I first saw and became a Georges St-Pierre fan, on November 18, 2006, the man kept his word. Georges St-Pierre effortlessly defeated Matt Hughes by second round TKO to win his first UFC Welterweight Championship. I was from that point all in as a fan of GSP.
What GSP Represents:
I’ll spare doing a career retrospective of St-Pierre, as I’m sure I’d likely be typing for hours, I just want to explain what this man meant to his sport, his country, and to me. The sport of MMA had never seen anything like GSP before. He wasn’t the first elite athlete (not to crossover from another sport) to blend martial arts skill and elite game planning, that would belong to Frank Shamrock. However, Georges brought a level of professionalism to the sport never seen. Even before he became UFC champion, Georges was always seen in a suit before and after his bouts. He was a humble, well-spoken athlete who despite English being his second language (St-Pierre is French-Canadian), never created controversial headlines. He revolutionized the methods of training for MMA, incorporating gymnastics, aerobics, olympic level strength training and traveling the world to train with masters in different forms of martial arts to improve his skillset. He was also a big proponent in his later career of more stringent drug testing being implemented into MMA as he felt doping was a major problem in the sport.
Most importantly for his ultimate legacy, he never forgot where he came from, staying in Montreal, Canada and keeping ties to his community. Of all the things that get tied to his legacy, what stands out to me is his selflessness. For example, every championship belt he won, he gave away to someone close to him, like his first UFC title pictured above to his mother which was documented by UFC cameras backstage after the fight.
Another standout moment that inspired me is the way he went about paying back his parents after he became a superstar in MMA.
These things are not shocking if you payed attention to the way he carried himself. He was a man of discipline, class and principle. Every athlete in every sport could learn something from Georges’ example. Even as a soccer player in my youth, I tried my best to carry myself as Georges. Now entering my grappling career, I really try to follow Georges’ lead, he himself a dominant MMA wrestler and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
- As seen above, this is me wearing a GSP t-shirt the night of what would be his final bout, his Middleweight title win in November 2017 over Michael Bisping. It was his first bout after a four year hiatus.
“There is a difference between a fighter and a martial artist. A fighter is training for a purpose: He has a fight. I’m a martial artist. I don’t train for a fight. I train for myself. I’m training all the time. My goal is perfection. But I will never reach perfection.”
— Georges St-Pierre
In terms of his athletic career, St-Pierre was always a martial artist first who used athletics to make a living compared to the majority of his peers who were athletes who used martial arts to make a living. The sport of MMA, shifting towards a more controversial, trash talking image led by Conor McGregor, will miss the class and martial arts tradition Georges St-Pierre leaves behind. There will likely never be another St-Pierre in MMA for a long time if the current state of the sport stays around. Canada’s favorite sporting icon since Wayne Gretzky made his country proud and made me as a fan proud since I was 13 years old.
So here’s to the young boy from Quebec who used being bullied as motivation to begin martial arts, developed his skill to become a world famous athlete and possibly the greatest his sport has seen thus far. More importantly, here’s to a stand up man that everyone can find motivation from. Merci, Georges. I hope to continue the ideals you set in my own pursuits. May you live a blessed retirement.
