MMA Fighting - DAMN! They Were Good | Remembering Georges St-Pierre, The Greatest Fighter Of All-Time

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

DAMN! They Were Good celebrates the careers of our favorite fighters in MMA history. On the 15th anniversary of his epic clash with B.J. Penn (and the 20th anniversary of his UFC debut), Jed Meshew is joined by Alexander K. Lee and Nick Baldwin to take a deep dive into Georges St-Pierre, the owner of the greatest single career in MMA history. The Prince That Was Promised from almost the moment he stepped into the octagon for the first time, St-Pierre's early career was more difficult that many remember, failing in his first attempt at claiming the welterweight title and then, once he finally broke through and beat Matt Hughes, losing the belt in his first title defense to Matt Serra, in what remains the biggest upset in MMA history. Setbacks like that could have broken a lesser fighter but instead they spurred St-Pierre on to even greater heights as he would reclaim the title and then put together one of the most dominant runs in the history of MMA, rewriting the record books and redefining what it means to be a professional cage fighter. What were our favorite moments, where did St-Pierre fall short and who exactly is Roberta Bondar? Listen in as we remember the spectacular career of one of MMA's all time greats. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Follow Nick Baldwin: @NickBaldwinMMA Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudullian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster. The Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,

What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Why do you save and invest? Is it so you can spend hours every day glued to the stock ticker, worrying about every movement up or down? Or is it so that you can live a better, happier, more fulfilling life? Betterman wants to help people invest to live, not live to invest. With features like automated saving, global diversification, and tax-smart tools,

Betterment is full of ideas to help you reach your goals without having to babysit your investments. They help their customers invest so that they can go live their lives. Go to Betterment.com to learn more. Investing involves risk, performance not guaranteed. Podcast Network. My name is Jedmishu, and we are back. That's right. It's another episode of Damn, they were good.

Back-to-back weeks, ladies and gentlemen, it wasn't entirely planned out, but if you just got done listening to the Kimbo Slice episode, you're welcome because that was obviously a treat for you. And we got another one because this week, on this Wednesday, in fact, a monumental event occurred many years ago. Some may say the biggest fight in UFC

history. Not still. Certainly was at the time, talking, of course, about the original super fight, George St. Pierre versus BJ Penn at UFC 94. And also, as I found out very recently from one of the panelists on the show,

also the 20-year anniversary of GSP's UFC debut. And so, of course, we decided to finally do a damn on arguably the greatest fighter of all time. George St. Pierre, The timing here, perfect, because also, of course, we're coming off of UFC 97. The promotions return to Toronto. Big things popping all over.

And so I decided, you know what? We're going to talk about the goat. We're going to talk about Canada's own. I got to get two Canadians on. So, of course, I'm joined by Alexander Kaylee, my esteemed colleague at intimately.com, great website. And also, a newbie, a rookie on damn, they were good. I am very happy, happy to announce to you. Mr. Nicholas Baldwin of the scores.

Is that correct, Nick? This is correct. Yes, that is whatever you want to call. That is who I am. That is where I'm from. It's good to be here. And you're from Canada. Don't forget Canada.

The Great White North. Yeah, I mean, but after Winnipeg, shout to Winnipeg. After UFC 297's representation, I'm, I no longer associate myself. with the Great North. It's, you know. I see, that's a mistake. You should disassociate yourself from Toronto.

AK's kind of stuck there. Yes, it's true. You just claim the peg. You said, ah, I'm from the peg, you know? This is fair. We don't know what those ruffians are doing over there in that part of the country. That is a good take. Winnipeg is objectively a better city than Toronto.

And so, yeah, I'm on board. Don't know about that. Don't know about that. Brad Cotona didn't exactly cover himself in glory at UFC 1097. Let's just be straight about it. This is, wow. By the way, Canadian so. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show, Nick. By the way, you, you know, you might say that you learned about the 20-year anniversary of GSPDB, almost 10 minutes before the show started, you might say. Oh, I would say five minutes before the show started. January was a big month for it.

January 25th, the 22nd, so it'll be the 22nd anniversary of his pro-career, his first flight with Ivan Medjavar. So January, month, big month of GSP milestones. Big month. And, you know, the two biggest UFC debut, UFC 94, BJ Penn, the biggest fight in history at that time.

It just, it felt like great timing for GSP because I've been kind of sitting on them waiting. I've got a list of fighters as everyone knows who I want to do. I want to parse out some of them, save them for special occasions. And this felt about as special as we could make it. And so Nick, it's your first time on the show. So if you ever have any questions, feel free to raise up. But ladies and gentlemen, we do it pretty simply. We've got a bunch of categories and we talk about the career of George St. Pierre through those categories.

But before we do that, I always like to bring a couple of special questions, you know, something specific. It's generally like, oh, how did you find out about this fighter? What was your first memories of this fighter? Well, we've got two Canadians here. The first question, I mean, we just need to solve this. for the world that doesn't live up in the great frozen north. Gentlemen, tell me how important is George St. Pierre to Canada, to Canadian sports, to you personally kind of speak on it before we get into the topics of consideration today.

Go ahead, Nick. I was going to be the nice Canadian and let you go first, but I'll take it. No, you're the rookie. You got to come in here with that rookie bigger. All right, if you insist. GSP, I think, is He is important to Canada, don't get me wrong, he is very much someone that, you know,

people in Canada know, even if they might not be the biggest MMA fan, boxing fan, comment sports fan, you probably know who GSP is. But I will say he isn't quite on that, like, top tier of Canada, superstar athlete, superstar in general. I still do know a lot of people who don't know who the heck GSP or George St. Pierre is.

Who's that top tier then? Give me the Mount Rushmore of Canadian plates. You're putting me on spot here, Jed. But I would say Terry Fox is very much in that conversation. If you go back to maybe like an Olympic sprinter, what is it? Ben Johnson, am I? Ben Johnson was the shit.

I mean, he is infamous. I mean, Ben Johnson is well-known for sure. Donovan Bailey more so, yeah, Dunovan Bailey. I guess you could go Christine Sinclair. I don't know, really. I would. I would. I would, yeah.

Tim Horton? Does he count or is he just too famous for donuts? There's probably two hockey players on there. Like he's probably Gretzky and then pick like another hockey player. Like Maurice Fashar or something. But I would like to throw Steve Nash on there. I do think Steve Nash, that's just a more modern, sort of a more modern sports fan.

He's right up there. But you probably have to put at least two hockey players on there. Is Steve Nash big in Canada? Obviously Canadian and obviously very big. He's a god. He's a got it. truly no idea. He's a god of here.

I don't know. So, I mean, I would say for combat sports fans, for MMA fans, he is, you know, everything. Like, you know,

I am, obviously at this point, I've been in MMA for a long time, but still newer than a lot of people. I've kind of been watching as a hardcore fan media member for 10 years now. And I didn't grow up with a lot of GSB's fights.

I missed out on a lot of it. But, yeah, like, he's still obviously huge. If you're a fan of the mixing of the martial arts, like GSP is your ride and die, you know? Yeah.

We know that AK hates the mixing of the martial arts. So, AK, is it safe to assume that you hate George St. Pierre? I mean, you almost have to, because has anyone mixed the martial arts better than him in the history of this business? I don't think so, right? He's the definition of the mixed martial artist. He popularized it. He stands for everything.

You stand opposed to. It's quite repulsive, Jed, but his accomplishments are undeniable. Definitely helped me to get into watching Cage fighting, as it were. I think, I believe the first time I watched one of his fights live was the second, uh, second Hughes fight, the second Hughes championship fight. So yeah, yeah. And then I had been sold on like, oh, this is, you should kind of, I've been getting to Emma because of, I think Brock Lesnar actually first.

And then, you know, I was a pro wrestling. guy and like, okay, cool, check this stuff out and whatever. UFC was definitely starting to boom during this time. So it was very easy to find people who watched it and who were like getting you to watch it. So I got into it. And then I saw that fight and I was like, oh, wow, this guy's kind of cool. Everything they, he's, he's been built.

He's been hyped up to be by my friends. And then from there on, everything came easy with Anderson Silva and all these other stars. But yeah, definitely influential and to have a guy to call your own. And let me tell us something, we thought, I'll say in the moment, I thought the train was never going to stop. I'm like, oh, cool, we've got this Canadian champion. Canadians must be great at this. I'm just going to be rooting for Canadian champions forever.

I didn't know when it came to an end. It would come to like a hard stop. You didn't know that he was actually the beginning and the end of this particular thing. I thought to be at least other guys. I thought we'd at least like always have contenders. I did not know when the train stopped. It just stopped cold. I have a note in obviously in my notes.

I have one of them because we're coming off a really tough week for Canadian fighters. certainly the men did very poorly at UC-297. Oh, and 7. And I was just like, did you guys have fun watching this? Was this happy to remember when Canada could do this sport? Or does it just make you sad about how far you have come as a nation from the heights that you once achieved? Because, I mean, GSP is about as good as it gets, but there was never the big follow-up from him, you know? Yeah.

I mean, I would say, I can't speak for anybody else who is. there or watching a TV. I just don't feel emotion when I watch MM anymore. Like I'm, I'm so far beyond that. So I mean, yeah, the men did not do well. Up in your ivory tower, Nick Baldwin. I know, I know. What a, what a rough start. But no, I mean. The motion is beneath me. I would say, like, watching the Canadian men at 297 in Toronto all lose. It's not like I go home gutted out you know gutted or anything but it's like man the future is not right you know maybe it was a rough night for for the old folks up here but Mike a lot like is that our best shot really like 42 year old something Neil Magny beat beat his ass that's our best guy in a devastating

way too because Mike Mollatt was winning and Mike Mollott fell off a cliff in a dramatic fashion and so I mean you can go both ways on that one not that we need to get into it I mean, he almost won, but he didn't. And so it's just tough. You know, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess is the point here. Yeah, and I'm kind of with Nick. I felt it a little more, but I didn't feel it until all the fights were over. And I was like, oh, until the loss.

Until the Lala had lost, like, oh, wow, all the men lost. Like, big shout-outs, Jillian Robertson and Jasmine Yostovic. But when you realize that the men went 0-1-7, you're like, wow, that is a stark, that's kind of the stark reality of the situation right now. And it's not like all these guys are getting cut, though I think, I think Johan Linus did, and I think, or has been released. And I believe Malcolm Gordon said he's retired. So that's two of the seven guys who lost we very likely won't be seeing back in the cage any time soon,

at least not on a national level. And then the other guys, Michael Blas, he'll bounce back. He'll be fine. But as far as viewing any of these fighters on this card as future champions or anyone who could reach that GSP level, not that we should compare everyone to GSP, but even like a top 10 guy, a contender. It feels like we're very far away. Well, let's not worry about, you know, what's to come. Let's worry about what happened previously.

That's what this whole show's about. Nostalgia and good vibes. The vibes have not started strong, but we're going to turn this franchise around. I got two more questions before we get into it. The first is very, very simply, do you guys remember when people were saying Kamar Usman was the goat at Welterweight? Of course. I remember when, when Tarry,

Ron Woodley was calling himself the goal to go to Walterweight. That was a good time. Yeah. Oh, man. It's why we do this show because I love the short memories that people have in this sport because you get new fans who don't know. I'm like, oh, yeah, GSP's got a good record, but like Oosman, so he's the most wins in a row.

And then that's a ridiculous statement now. Like to see if someone were to say, should be like, yeah, you're insane. And the second question is sort of piggybacking off this. and it's the big one that I think we'll get to sort of over the arch of this whole show is very simply. George St. Pierre, the goat. Is he your goat of mixed martial arts? He could be. For me, he's not.

I would put him at number two. I would probably put John Jones at number one, then GSP. But if you want to say GSP number one, I will not fall to you for it one bit. I think you very well could be right. It's kind of a 50-50 debate for me. Even if you talk about John Jones's failures or faults outside the cage, I don't know, it's just tough. Like, GSP had some huge wins.

John Jones had some huge wins. GSP is probably the most skilled, most well-rounded fighter we've ever seen. But John Jones, just like the sheer talent and the ability, the athleticism, that was obviously next level still is. I'd put GSP number two overall, but hey, if you want to put him number one, you're probably not wrong either. He's probably number one for me.

He had the best career, I think, of any star. He's had the best career. I think that's very difficult to argue against. Where John Jones, like the case for number one is, if you took them in their primes, you made the, you know, you did the hypothetical pound for pound argument where you could take away, you know,

you could equalize the physical, the physicality and the size as much as you could while still maintaining who they are, like skill-wise and, you know, talent-wise, I would pick John Jones to beat almost anybody. I would certainly pick John Jones to beat almost anybody. So if you're going by that criteria, very understandable to have John Jones number one.

But just considering, again, a lot of the John Jones weirdness, if you compare their resumes, and John Jones has a great resume, I just think GSP is a little bit stronger, taking account the drug test failures too, which, if anyone wants to start saying, hey, I bet GSP was juicing too. Well, here's beauty of it.

probably right guess what he never got caught and that's another point for gsp so not not being better at taking drugs uh if you think that he was cheating that's that's not a that's not a that's not a thing to put him like down into the same level as john jones and oh i bet they're both juicing oh well guess what one of them was dumb and got caught and one of them didn't so uh point gsp number one palp uh i mean that's a terrific argument gsp never had to hide under under a cage for our day and a half to avoid usada guy just said all nanny baby all nanny baby Natty. All natty. For me, my default answer for Goat is George St. Pierre.

I'm not entirely sure I believe it. It would not be John Jones over him. But GSP is just the answer to me that is the least objectionable of all. When you're talking about something like Goat, there's always a case against. Every fighter has like pretty clear. Here's why they're not that you can bring up. And I think GSP just has the least of that. there are still some you can nitpick and we'll do some of that on this show. But I think, A.K., you sort of boiled it down to the crux of my argument every time I get into this very simply. Definitely had the best career.

If you want to say he's not the goat, I'm not going to argue that point too hard. But if I could swap careers with any fighter, so like, hey, we could just, there's a magic lamp and the genie says, I give very specific wishes. I'm not really sure why I do this, but, you know, that's just sort of how this hypothetical world exists. The wishes I give are you can swap your life with the life of one MMA fighter. I think the answer is pretty clearly George Seymour over anyone else. I mean, maybe if you're just focused on the money, then you'd take Connor McGregor. But if you're looking at the thing from the totality, I think GSP just has the least objectionable career of anyone in history. And so he's kind of my default goat. But yeah. And I mean, on that

note, because I think that would eliminate guys like John Jones and Connor just because of all the the outside the cage issues, if you will. Yep. I'm not trying to be arrested. I'm good without that. So, yeah, he's just, and if you're one of those people who's a stickler for drug use, then you're pulling out Anderson Silva's and John Joneses. And he just has a flawless career, despite there being some flaws in there.

So that's the background, ladies and gentlemen. And we're about to head into the categories. But before we do that, as always, I like to give just a brief. little recap in case you're a fan in the last few years. Maybe you never watched GSP Live. You probably know who he is because like,

let's be Siri Dog. But a very brief rundown of his career before we hop into the first category, GSP makes his MMA debut in 2002. Two years later, he debuts in the UFC against Carl Periscan. He ends up winning the welterweight belt for the first time two years after that.

So within four years of debuting, he is a UFC champion. The sport kind of worked a little faster back then. But GSP loses his next fight to Matt Sera and a fight we will talk plenty about. Then comes back, wins an interim belt in 2007, and then reclaims the unified title against Matt Sera and their rematch. And from there, it's GSP never loses again. He starts building his case as one of the most accomplished decorated fighters of all time. He ends up not really, but sort of retiring from the sport in 2017.

He takes a couple years off, or sorry, not in 2017, what year? because he comes back in 2017. He takes a couple years off in 2013. My mistake. Comes back in 2017 after four-year hiatus to challenge Michael Bisping for the middleweight title of the world. And then following that, that's it. He retires in 2019,

vacates about just a couple days later, and that's it. He gets inducted into the U.C. Hall of Fame in 2020, retires with the record of 26 and 2, the 2009 fighter of the year. and has just an infinite number of records across the UFC's record books, certainly divisional records. He basically owns all of them except for welterweight wins,

which Neil Magne owns, but he basically owns everything else divisionally and is, like I said, one of the most accomplished fighters of all time, third all-time in title defenses with nine for the UFC, and so that's why he's a Hall of Famer, that's why he's arguably the goat. and now we get into the fun stuff, boys and girls.

The category is Nick. It's first time here. We've sent you the list. I hope you're ready because we start, as always, with the Mount Rushmore. You got four fights. Ladies and gentlemen, four fights to define GSP's career. And we were talking about it, you know, in the green room beforehand, AK, this was arguably the most difficult Mount Rushmore that I've had to do.

We've done this show a lot. Obviously, I've done all of them. I think there are two fights that everyone's going to have on here. Just absolutely no doubt about it. I think there's probably a third that we may all have together, though I felt very weird about putting it on there. And then that fourth spot is anybody's guess. So I'll start us off.

GSP did a lot of shit, Jed. I know if you heard about it. He did a lot of shit. Let me get this out of the way. He accomplished a lot. Is he one of the, I think he's one of the only, like, guys who you can watch men's UFC champions

who you can watch all their fights like an extensive round Brock I get you probably can but he has what like seven watch all of Brock's fights because like seven career fights Ronda I think Ronda I'm pretty sure I went to check sure watch all of them you can find her amateur stuff we did the Ronda Dam and I've watched all

yeah and Kimbo for sure so but Brock Ronda Kimbo are kind of in that weird like side there are such a weird so BJ Penn is also one Can you want him? You can't. Can you watch all his fights?

You can't watch all him on Fight Pass because he has like one or two. Like he's got a rumble in the rock that I don't think so on fight pass. That's not anywhere. Is that on, is that on, you can find that? I mean, it's on YouTube somewhere. I've watched every BJ Penn fight. I have absolutely seen every BJ Penn fight. Okay, okay.

Okay, that's true. Okay. Randy, you probably watch all of Randis. Oh, maybe. I know that you've, yeah. Like, certainly if you're going back in the day when people just made their, and made their debut in the. in the UFC.

That's true. You're going to be able to watch a lot of those. I think Mark Hunt and Crowcott. Probably because they came in again. Just right of great at kickboxing. Crocotte. A thousand percent. Yeah.

Just because ProCop made his debut in pride. So maybe it's not that special. Mark Hunt as well. But, well, it's really special compared to today where that is very much not a thing that can happen. So I'm kicking things off. The first one I've got here, it's very, very simple. It's Matt Hughes.

UFC 65. The second Matt Hughes fight. So he has a trilogy with Matt Hughes. The first one, he ends up losing its armbard at the very last second of the first round. And a round that he was winning. And then settles comes back, gets to fight Matt Hughes coming off a controversial BJ Penwin, which we'll talk about a little later. This is when he finally wins a Walterweight title.

And this is the win that is supposed to set up the new era. GSP is very young at the time. Everyone expects him to hold the belt forever. And then he lost to Matt Sairn's very first title defense, which was super odd, super weird. But this win to me is just, I know that it's not the start of the rain, but this is the win where he arrived.

He is a champion. It's a sensational performance over a dominant fighter at the time. So Matt Hughes, UFC 65, is this on both of your lists? Yes. I went with 79. I went with the trilogy about.

Interesting. Okay. So we're already deviating here. I mean, I knew we all have one of these two. I just opted for this one. Okay. Just because it is his first UFC win. I'm usually going to put first title wins on the thing.

Did you guys go back and watch any of these fights? So you go back and watch this fight in particular because GSP was just, a handful, man, like almost from the rib. And Mac Hughes, I know, uh, I know both of you were not, like, deeply into MMA at the time, uh, that that's just, you know, you, you were becoming fans, uh, I think on this timeline. Though I'm not actually not even sure, Nick, if you were becoming a fan at that point. I was probably more into like Bob the builder at the time, but anyways. Yeah, yeah, I was like five years old. Yeah, you were watching UFCs at five? What the hell? Yeah, yeah, two years later. I'm sorry.

My bad, I just assumed we all were DGYNs from birth. So, yeah, Matt Hughes is a big deal. Like, he wasn't as big as he was when BJ beat him to claim the belt, but Matt Hughes was still a dominant champion. Matt Hughes had beaten him GSP before, and even if you looked at that fight and could see, GSP's probably going to get this dude in a couple of years. This was still such a crowning achievement that if you had,

if you removed the Matt Serra fight from happening, this fight I think would be looked on much more fondly and it's still just an incredibly one-sided ass kicking. Also a groin kicking. Also a groin kicking. Is the two kicks to the wiener that puts it over the top for you? Like when you're looking at 65 and 79, you're like, well, I mean, he kicks, and one of these fights, he kicks, he kicks Matt Hughes and the Yabo's twice. So that's got to go.

I am always pro groin kicks, underrated groin kickers. These are clean, too. fired a few into Johnny Hendricks as well, just keeping it sneaky. GSP, he had that dog at him in that respect. Nick, do you have anything to say about this fight as you've put it on your Mount Rushmore? Not a whole lot more to add.

I would just say it's probably one of the highlights, like purely in terms of like a knockout or submission of his career. Like highlight real-esque finish. It was a great head kick. Go back and watch it if you haven't seen it ever. or haven't in a while. And yeah, as you said, Jed, I mean, this was supposed to be a start of long rain, and it wasn't quite that yet.

You know, GSP did do that. It just took a few steps to get there. But, yeah, it was a hell of a win. And honestly, what puts it on there for me is just how good of a knockout it was. That's a great point because stepping on future categories, this is my Randolplex award winner. I think it's the best single highlight of GSP's career. this is an interesting category when we'll get there because there aren't like a ton of great single highlights but this is certainly one of them and true to form this also was on every

gsp video package for the entirety of his career after it is always that head kick uh do you do you want me to talk about hughes three now jett or do you want me to save that or after sure let's talk about hughes three now because they're connected it's a whole thing right it's a whole series it's all it's a whole series so hugh's three now uh and to answer your question it's less about the kicks to to the groin that put this over. It's more about Hughes 3. I'll let you speak to the performance. Hughes 3 was an outcome that was entirely expected for me.

And so that just, that loses a bit of the shine because I was like, yeah, he's definitely going to kick the shit out of Matt Hughes this time around because of the two fights they've had, one semi-miracle arm bar when GSP was 22 is the only bit of hope he's had, so he's just going to thump him this time around. But tell us why you chose this one. Yeah, three is a little awkward because three, we love to remember, was also for an interim title

because Matt Sarah and Matt Hughes had just coached the Ultimate Fighter six, I believe, one of the least talented, a very entertaining season. I love that season. Always got to get the Ultimate Fighter reference on to you. I'm eight for eight or every many times I've done Dam, I've mentioned the Ultimate Fighter. It's in everything.

But they were supposed to fight after that season. Again, people go watch that season again. Who won tough six, A.K. Who won tough six? The immortal Mac Donzig dominated, by the way, dominated the competition on tough six. That's a good poll, man. I didn't know you'd know it.

It's not a good cast. Ben Saunders was on there. He was kind of okay. George Sodropos was on that season. He was like a relevant lightweight for a long time. But he got smoked by Tommy Spear. It was, anyway, I could talk about tough six all day. That's a whole other podcast.

Let's not do this. So it was for an interim title, the third huge. USP fight, excuse me. And so it kind of makes it a bit weird. And then even afterwards, GSP's kind of like, this belt is great, habit, habit, but it means nothing. It's like, okay, cool. We're kind of crap for your moment.

But this was very much for me, the true, true, true passing of the torch. Because you're right, I mean, he beats Hughes the first time, the second fight. And that is kind of like, we kind of all know, okay, well, GSP is just better than this guy. But this was like, this was really the end of it for Hughes. Because after this, Hughes, I think he fights six more times. he's a 500 fighter like it's it's really over this was the the nail on the coffin here and for sure any doubts that he would be gps were out the window so uh i like that it's the end of this series of this story him and mac hughes which i think spans what like five years maybe

more what's the one's the very first fight oh two very first fight's in oh four oh four okay so it's three years it's a three year for which is a lifetime in may years even back then it honestly felt like it was way longer than it does in my head yeah and then uh Also, I like the one note I like is that he ends up with Arm Bar, which is again how Matt Hughes beat him the first time. And very close to the end of the round. Not the buzzer beater, the bad Hughes beat him with, but in Arm Bar, I think, five or six seconds left in the round. So there's a poetry to it. We like poetry here on Dan.

That's the writer in you just like in the symmetry there. Yeah. So I go 79, but I almost feel like you have to watch both fights. I almost feel like you have to watch 65 and 79. But yeah, they're both great options. But Matt Hughes is inextricable from his legacy. So it has to be one of those fights in there. Yeah, you don't, I don't ever really think.

think of GSP as like a guy who had like big his career was defined by rivalries but sort of was as you kind of look through it. Matt Hughes arguably the biggest and I would say the most defining of those rivalries. My next choice, this was the last choice that I put. And even moments before the show, I was debating on whether I wanted this year, if I wanted another one sort of swapping in and out. And I have ultimately put it here because I think it's, it is a. significant part of the story.

And so the answer I have is Matt Sarah 2 at UFC 83. This is when he wins back the welterweight title for real unifies that that interim belt that AK just celebrated. Beats the holy bejesus out of Matt Sarah. I mean, it is the fight that everyone anticipated the first fight being. Because we'll talk about the Matt Sarah fight. I want to save that for the category, which it will obviously be mentioned in later. But this fight, like I said, I think you don't have to put it on your Mount Rushmore for GSP.

I think there's a lot of space in here for something different. I ultimately decided that this was the one for me because this was when he solidified it. There was absolutely no doubt. And historically, even if at the time, like it was a good win, he overcomes that loss, etc. I think it means more historically as you look back on his career and say, George St. Pierre only ever lost to two dudes, and he never, every person he ever fist fought, he beat. Now, they may have beaten him, but this win, I think if Matt Sair had retired after getting the belt, this would be a huge black mark on George St. Pierre's career.

And the fact that he was able to get this win and it was so dominant, it was just enough to edge it into the fourth spot on the Mount Rushmore for me. So do either of you fellas have this on your Mount Rushmore's? Yeah, I do. Nick Baldwin, you and I, two for two. Well, and you know what? I have the third Matt Hughes win on there as well. Oh, wow. Okay. Whoa, you double-diff.

Both of these. I was going to mention it, and then we kind of just moved on, which is fine. You double-hused. Yeah. You never double-hused, Nick. That's a speak on both of them, Nick. Okay, yeah, I want to hear this. I won't say much about the Hughes win.

I think AK summed it up well. It was, you know, the end of a big trilogy for GSP. It was beating, you know, then future Hall of Famer for the second time, sort of leaving no doubt. And yes, it was just the interim title at the time. But I'm sure back then, everybody thought that, okay, this was basically the uncrowned champion. He was then going to go fight Matt Sarah, beat the crap out of him, which he did. And that was the beginning. So I just felt like beating Matt Hughes for the second time,

two one for GSP, submitting him, obviously avenging that loss as well. I just think it has to go on there. I would say the second Matt Hughes win was fourth on the list for me. I think there's one fight we'll probably get to later that I would consider swapping out for, and maybe you guys will convince me, but that's how I have it. And then I also have the Matt Sarah win as well. I think to me, I trust Jed's judgment more, but this is actually a no-brainer. I think because this was the beginning, I think because this was the beginning of the run,

this is the win that set GSP up to be maybe the greatest fighter of all time. Does beating Matt Serra mean everything just based on Matt Serra's accomplishments, et cetera, et cetera? No, but avenging that huge upset, you know, probably still the biggest ever we've ever seen. how dumb it was. He really just big brothered Mount Sarah. The knees to the body are still legendary. And yeah, this was GSP becoming the champ forever. And so I think that went over Sarah has to be on the Mount Rushmore.

Two other things in favor of it. Well, one, I just want to echo the knees to the body. Guys, we need more people just doing big brother knees to the body of just sit down. And wear it, Matt, Sarah. Like, you don't get a lot of TKO finishes from that. Incredible, incredible stuff from George St. Pierre. Also, interestingly enough, the final finish of his career, TKO of his career, because his entire run is just decisions until we get to the Michael Bisfing thing.

Oh, no, I guess he gets a TKO over BJ. I was going to say, but I guess he gets a TKO over BJ. A finish mid-round, like a mid-round T-KO. So yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be back. Yeah, the corner stopped it. BJ would have gone out there for five and just gotten wailed on for five for sure. Wouldn't have been an issue.

But also significant, which I didn't realize until I was going through this. And honestly, this fact makes me feel even better about putting it in my four spot. Now my number three spot I'm a little less confident in. GSP's first UFC fight in Canada. This is the pay-per-view in Montreal. Obviously, Canada, he becomes. of he is the biggest star that's ever been out of that country, your country in this sport and fought many times in Montreal,

ended up basically exclusively fighting Montreal for a good period of his career. But this is the first one. That's pretty significant. That feels like a pretty critical piece to the story. And I don't actually have him fighting in Montreal and the rest of mine. So feel pretty good about this. this being my late edition. So that means, Nick, we've got three of yours already.

I know. Which is spectacular. We've got two of mine. We've got two of AKs. Do we have one of you? Technically just one, but you and I have only because we mentioned Hughes three, you and I have none in common so far. We've none in common.

That's, I love that. I mean, you guys don't have much in common, like, period. This is true. It does make sense. Yeah, but Nick, when we do this show, I always think, like, there's going to be a lot of, like, there's going to be a lot of options. here and then even for like the most accomplished fighters it's it's all pretty same like some of the dudes we've done kimbo everyone just sort of kind of ends up having three of four four four

even when you do like we did robbie luller and robbie luller we all had the identical because it was like well you couldn't pick a lot but everyone's going to pick the three fight of the years and then we're also going to pick the same other awesome fight to robbie with george there is a little bit more leeway though I do think our final two, AKA, we probably will share in common. And my guess is that one of these is going to be on yours, Nick, but I don't know which one. I would assume, but I would assume. I've obviously done this chronologically for mine to things. BJ Penn is my number three.

The second BJ Penn fight at UFC 9 before, it is largely the reason we're doing this podcast at this period of time. It was the biggest fight in MMA history at the time. basically we've talked on other shows for a few years. The biggest fight in history was Fador versus KroKop. This is the fight that surpassed it. The UFC by this time had a stranglehold on the sport.

This was the first champion versus champion fight in UFC history. The UFC pulled out all the stops. They did a tour. They did the UFC prime time for this, basically a 24-7 rip-off that was sick as shit and was like a major talking point of like, oh, the UFC is trying to get there with the big boys and really amp up the production and this is the, this is what they're going to do. And we thought they'll just start doing this for all fights.

It turned out not to be the case. But, you know, looking back on it, it makes it even more special. I mean, this was, I cannot tell you guys how pumped I was about this fight at the time. I have been a lifelong BJ Penn fan, one of my favorite fighters of all time. one of two fighters that I say were responsible for me falling in love with mixed martial arts. And I was so deeply convinced he was going to beat George St. Pierre because I watched the first fight and was like, obviously, BJ's just, B.J.'s just better, he's better fighter. BJ's carrying rocks underwater.

What's George doing? George isn't carrying rocks underwater. BJ's jumping out of pools. You don't know. And then George's beat the tar out of it. I mean, just for all of the believing that this, I remember this feeling distinctly twice at this period of time. It was this fight that had like this sort of energy of who can win.

Everybody's not really sure. It could go either way. This is all this talk from months and months on end. And then George just beats a hell out of him. The other fight that this was like was Rampage Chuck 2. When Rampage finally comes over after Pride and everyone's like, I don't know. Like, yeah, Rampage beat Chuck that first time. but Chuck's gotten so much better now, and then Rampage just colds him in like three minutes or however long it took.

These were the same energy on this fight. I was depressed forever because George just, it was not competitive, but the biggest moment of his career and George St. Pierre showed up in the biggest fashion possible and absolutely kicked the shit out of BJ. To me, this is one of, this is one that has to be on no questions asked. this would be my number one choice of all if we're ranking them as such and i seal some nodding head so can it is it safe to assume that both of you gentlemen have this fight on your mount rush moors yes this is my fourth i didn't put them in any order but it's uh for sure the one that uh i mean i guess in my mind in addition to the sarah wind that has to be on there um you summed it up perfectly jed but um yeah this was in many ways you know the the peak of his career i

We'll get to that later, but this is, if I was to assume going back to this event, this is when we really realized that, okay, GSP is on a next level. Because this was, as you said, Jed, like, we weren't sure if maybe BJ Penn could win. Yes, GSP could win two. Champ first champ, first time that had happened. It was a big deal. And then he just goes out there and does what he does, corner stop, which is dominant from pillar to post.

this is when we realized, yeah, GSP is a generational talent. And so this was a legendary performance in the one that, yeah, has to be on that list. Very much so. This was when I had to acknowledge. And not everyone did because even Dana White's at this point still had Anderson as a top pound for pound fighter in the world. But I was pretty sure that GSP deserved to be top pound for pound fighter in the world prior to that. like just because his run against you know hugh sarah fitch is a great run when he beat bj i was like yeah there's just no question like this is the best this is the best fighter in the world over anderson silva

uh and he held that title for the next however four years until he exited however the how long it was that he went on before he went out so yeah uh aka anything to add about this particular fight he broke him he broke bj man and so much of the those uh why think one of the jay's corner He's corner wouldn't let the fight. BJ was ready. BJ was ready to go out there and keep scrapping. One of the other DJs had to save him. One of the three or four DJs and the family had to save him.

JD's. They're not DJs. I mean, they could be DJs as a profession. They're all JD paying. Yes. All the JDs had just, one of the JDs had to save him. Because part of those great pre-fight videos was BJ saying, like, I'm going to kill them. Like, I'm going to kill GSP.

And it did not go that way. GSP broke him physically. He cut him up a bit, which was amazing. We never saw BJ getting cut. It's shocking. Shocking there was. And the worst thing than breaking him was that BJ then having to sit through George's post-fight speech explaining how he did it.

I will never forget, watch this with my friends. And we're all kind of like, oh, my God, he did it. Like, yeah, he did it. And then kind of like, yes, GSP kept talking, kind of like, like, okay, all right, because George goes to like, I was on top of him and I used the arm on the shoulder. I drain the energy. And I'm like, all right, like, you know, George, you got to keep, you got to keep these

post-by things a little punchy. You know, you can't, it's great. Now is not the time for a technique breakdown. So, like, it was a cool moment. But also, if you're BJ and his team, you're just having to hear all this. You're just like, oh, my God, I can't believe we just lost this guy. I can't believe. This is a guy who just, who beat our ass, who is our forever rival, who we will

never beat. So it was a great and hilarious moment, but also, and so quintessentially, GSP. But, yeah, this has to be on that. All GSP had to do is, well, we knew BJ is probably not going to have the cardio to compete after 10. So we spent the first round just hugging his legs against the fence and then he was drained. And then from there on, we just beat the hell out of him. That's it. All he had to say.

But he's about the education and he had to say exactly how it was done. He's a man of principle also. He shouts to this fight just for a number of reason. But all the pre-fight build up was great. I remember you guys weren't big internet forum guys at the time. There was a lot made of BJ's comments that he's a real fighter and George is just an athlete. And, you know, I'm a real fighter. I'm a win.

And then he just got the hell being out of him. There was a tough, tough look for BJ Ben coming out of this one and all the talk that he had and running with rocks and all the stuff. So tough scenes there. that means Nick's done and I'll wrap mine up when get to honorable mentions and we can hear what AKs is unless AK will still have at least one more. I'm willing to bet though that if you haven't had these other ones at AK, you'll share this one with me. I think so. This is the, if Mount Rushmore, Mount Rushmore is Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln,

I think this might be my Roosevelt. Like he's the third guy there, but I'm not sure that he really deserves. to be on the Mount Rushmore. I just, I bit the bullet. Michael Bisping, U.S.C. 217 in 2017. It's the return. This is when he comes back after the four-year layoff. Georgia's never said the words, but this is a true statement.

Like, this is a burned in the stone fact. He came back because he knew he could win another belt because Michael Bisping was a weak ass champion and he saw a window and he took it. And credit to him. but the Manhattan fought in years, four years to be precise. Tyrone Woodley had been calling him out every witch away. And George was just like, no, I'm good. I don't want to fight any of these other welterweights.

You know, if Bisspinkham won, if Luke Rockhold had won that and was still the champion, I suspect George would have just never fought again, which really fine. It was okay, but instead he saw an opportunity. He took it. and not as pretty as fight. Tough, tough second round. Tough third round until the finish. But the man knew what he was doing

when he picked a fight with a one-eyed geriatric and dropped him, gets the cleanest rear-naked choke you'll ever see, and puts Michael Bisping to sleep to claim his second, I guess his third UFC belt, his second weight class championship at the time was only the fourth dude to ever win belts in multiple UFC weight classes.

Obviously, they think five more people have since done it since. But again, this is sort of the brilliant dessert to his career. I think he didn't need this. This did not need it to be added to it to be like, oh, this guy's the greatest fighter I've ever seen. But it's a nice little cherry on top of the Sunday, and so I decided that it can round out the Mount Rushmore, and AK, you agree, tell me why.

Yeah, it's a, it's a victory laugh. And so why I was also like, I had ruled it out. I had ruled it out. Oh, this is the one. Yeah, I had, I had, I had, I had, I had to have one of the huge fights. I'll say what the fourth fight is in the moment, which was also a lock for me. And then, but I was like, bisman, like, it seems superfluous. It just seems like you don't need it.

But it was a really cool moment. And the fact that he finished him, the way he did it, he finished him by hurting him on the feet and then submitting him. but like we just didn't think that George was there anymore, like a George that could not like a rock something like that on the feet and finish so viciously. It was a great visual. There's a lot of blood in the fight. And he looked like shit for a lot of the fight too.

Yeah, he looked like physically, again, he's pretty much just fat GSP in there. You know what I mean? He's not like, it's not like he bulked up with like muscle. It's not like he's like, oh, he's got, he's 105 pounds of muscle now. I was like, no, he's still kind of just himself, but he put on some weight. So he makes 185. It's not a great visual for a lot of the fight.

But it is hard to not put on the list just because of his execution and being able to, again, just elevate his legacy that much more. Didn't need it. His work at Welterweight is unimpeachable. Did not need this. But to say, you know what, I effed around. I fought a great fighter at 185 and I won another title. It's just so cool.

It's such a cool thing for he'll do. And then also kind of a way for him to say goodbye with his head really held high. because the Johnny Hendricks fight, yeah, he won, but it will always go down as controversial. Whether you think, even if you think he won, that, like, you know, you agree with the decision, it was still close. It was still like, ooh, like, GSP escaped that Hendricks fight, whether you thought he won or not. He escaped that fight. And then for him to just retire, we're all fine with it. We're like, okay, but he didn't get to go over this head really, really held high, and that's what he got with the Bissping win.

So I think it goes. It has to go. I think it goes to Mount Rushmore. I got no problem with it. I will say that that is, that last part is. a pretty big piece of there's just being a good even though at the time like it wasn't he didn't leave the cage retiring you know i think that would have been kind of nice to have that moment but obviously sort of teased he was going to stick around at least for a little bit there had been

a lot made jed he wasn't fighting robert whittaker he wasn't fighting robert wittaker he wasn't fighting you all romero was saucy we all knew this anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex news like i mean one when dana has to give out a a speech beforehand or whatever say george is coming back george signed a contract where he will defend like if george wins he signed a contract if he wins about he will defend against robber wittaker and we're all like yeah if you're saying that bro it feels like we all know that that's not true you know i mean anytime dana has to like try and convince you that something's going to happen it's not going to happen.

So I've got four. I've got a couple honorable mentions, but AK, you've got one left. What is rounding out your Rushmore? I'm very interested to see with where you've gone here. I'll say it real quick because I've spoken about this fight on the show before. So my list is Penn 2, Hughes 3, Bisping, and Carlos Condit, U.C. 154. This is, I guess, my fight, my only fight that I picked, I know, BJPen, we said it was also in, no. Okay.

So this is my only fight that I picked that was in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. So I love the Carlos Condid fight. I talked about it on the Dan with Carlos, so I won't go over everything again. It's just an amazingly competitive fight. It's a great moment for Carlos. Carlos, of course, goes on to lose a decision to George Senior, St. Pierre, but gives him the biggest scare besides Hendrix of his championship run when he kicks GSP in the head in round three and has all of us Canadians going like gasping.

Like, oh my gosh, this is it. But GSP reaches way, way, way, way deep down and recovers and just GSP's ass for the rest of fight and it's it's a I love the fight is so tense it's so tense even though in many ways it doesn't deviate action-wise from some of his other tele-defences outside of that moment it's still amazing to see him uh to see and I think he was coming back from an injury if I'm not mistaken or something there was some reason some sort of comeback element to it which is also I find quite inspiring so this on my condit Mount Rushmore as on my GSP Mount Rushmore so I had to have this on your maybe it's because I like both fighters so much but yeah of his

title defenses besides BJ. This is the one that really stands out for me, I think. This was my number six. It was my number two honorable mention. I will also just a brief add on. This is the fight that George St. Pierre calls the proudest moment of his career.

Like, you know, when you retire, people ask you these sorts of questions. He has always been very deferential to BJ as like the toughest opponent of his career, certainly that first fight. And it's called BJ like, oh, yeah, he's probably the most talented fighter have ever faced, but when asked like what's, what was the peak of his career was,

was his favorite moment, most proud moment, coming, overcoming the GSP headkick, surviving it, getting up, fighting through it and winning arguably the round and certainly the fight. So I think this is totally reasonable to have there. Wasn't my one B, wasn't the one we swapped out for Sarah, but I think a very valid choice. Nick, you got anything to say about the Carlos Kahn about? No, not really. I would say that the Bisming win was my sort of first honorable mention. First alternate. Very much could have been on the top four.

Probably would have swapped it out for, I guess, the second to use win. I guess the reason it wouldn't have made the top four would just kind of go back to the point of, did this really matter? Yes, it was a great exit. And so I shouldn't sit here and tell you why it was bad. It was so obviously one of the best moments of his career. And as AK said, it was a great way to go out. And I think his point was great, just about the Johnny Hendricks fight was not the best way to go out.

And then four years later, he didn't really know if GSP was going to be able to do it. I don't remember what the closing odds were, but I know at some point, Bisbing was a slight betting favorite. And then, yeah, for GSP to go through it. They closed it even. Okay, well, there you go. And so for GSP to have a kind of. couple tough rounds and then put him to sleep. And again, like, this was a title rain that didn't have that many finishes. And so he ended with objectively one of the highlights, sort of highlight

real moments of his career. And so that was great. But in terms of importance and significance, it just fell short. Champ champ is great. But especially now, it's like everybody's a champ champ. I mean, you're saying that the shortest title reign in UFC history is not significant. Because that's what we're talking about. This is true. 33 days. Beating the esteemed boss Routen by one day. Boss had the belt 34 days before vacating it.

GSP expertly was like, if I get rid of this belt right now, I'll have the shortest rain in UFC history. Take it, Dana. I don't want them not coming back. GSP is like, I know I have a lot of records, but there's one more I can quickly grab before I get the hell out of here. So, might as well do that. I'm just saying, if you're Raquel Pennington or your Jekis Dup Plus C right now, you can vacate that title and have a record that will never be taken from you.

Oh, Rocky Pennington. Okay, my first alternate, because I only have one more, our callers count it was there. And I'll say that this was the one that I bumped from Matt Sera just before we started recording. John Fitch. I don't know that a lot of people would have this one on their Mount Rushmore. I did want a fight that was just a title defense that wasn't BJ Penn, you know, that

wasn't these sort of other really clear marquey moments. I was kind of looking through and originally I sort of highlighted Condit because of GSP's feelings towards it. And then I went back and rewatch John Fitch and I remember that fight very, very well at the time because John Fitch, you know, it's no big deal anymore for fighters to string together, eight, nine, ten, if you're Tony Ferguson, 12 wins without getting a title shot. But John Fitch was a guy who everyone in the MMA fandom was like, yeah, he deserves a title shot. And then they just kept making him beat dude.

It was just like, well, okay, but like, what if you beat one more person before you got it? What if you beat one more? What if you beat Diego Sanchez? Nope. Okay, but like at some point, he just hasn't lost in a decade. Can we have him fight for the belt? And he finally gets there. And yes, George St. Pierre was the betting favorite.

Everyone did expect him to win because the style matchup in general is good for him. But John Fitch is a rough, rugged dude, had been competing at the highest level very long, and the thoroughness with which GSP just pummeled his ass. I mean, I think one of the scorecards was 50, 43, like, just put a wamping on him. I think it is very arguably George St. Pierre's best performance, just full stop of his career, a pillar to post thrashing of this young man. And so I had it in there for a very long time, and I ultimately just pulled it off for Sarah. And I think I feel okay about that.

But if there were five spots, I'm definitely putting John Fitch on there. Yeah, definitely worthy of an honorable mention. Fitch, 16 straight wins heading in that. Hadn't lost a fight in over five years. They really sold it beautifully. I remember the marketing for this fight was about as strong as you get, given John Fitch's reputation for, even though he had some finish in the UFC,

still kind of being a grinder. But GSP himself was already becoming enough of a draw that you just needed reasonable, respectable opponents. And Fitch, he fit that bill so perfectly. And then for GSP, just put it on his ass was great. That was one of two fight in the nights that John Fitch won. do you remember the other one? Because I was going to, I was going to remark strictly that this one fight of the night for a 25 minute shalacking, which is pretty rare.

Correct. What other John Fitch fight would win fight of the night? It was one of his like back and forth kind of, well, not back. Yeah, back and forth actually. Or like a late comeback kind of one. I have no idea. Truly no idea. Eric Silva.

Wow. Okay. because I was trying to think he was like he John Fitched all over Tiago Alves that wouldn't be there. Mike Pierce is fun. Yeah, okay. Eric Silva. I might have to go rewatch that fight. Do you have, do either of you have any honorable mentions here?

I just wanted to quickly know, I don't think you can really make a case for it on the Mount Rushmore. Even honorable mention is kind of weird because it wasn't about the performance. It was more of a moment. It was the significance and the connection to the Canadian fans, Jake Shields, Skydome, and Toronto, 2011. Still one of the most attended events in UFC history. And I think that will always go down as one of the biggest moments of GSB's career, but obviously not really Mount Rushmore fight just in terms of the performance itself.

But still worth mentioning and how could we go a whole podcast? without mentioning Jake Shields. Oh, he'll come up later. Also worth noting, though, the Jake Shields win is when GSP broke the record for consecutive Walterway title defenses. Matt Hughes had it at five. Jake Seals was number six. So a significant win, a very weird, odd fight, GSP tears his groin in it, but we have

opportunity to speak about that fight later on. Anything else in your honor will mention is before we move on, fellas? I would have loved to have something from earlier and just, career, but his peak was so... I really looked at it. Yeah, his peak was so distinct that, you know, you're just getting cute if you're not putting on, like, four of the, of the, however many fights we mentioned there. Because I think his debut was great with Carl Prisian, and it's kind of a time capsule. People remember how well liked Carl was at the time.

Not that he was, like, deep in his UFC career. It was two young gunners. Like, GSP was 22. Carl was 21. I think Carl was the second UFC fight. GSP's fighting in the U.S. for the first time. This is at UFC 46. So, BJ's on that car.

too he fights Matt Hughes and Matt Sarah's also on that card so like all their fates kind of like were you know so so closely linked is very interesting and and just we just holds car around the cage which is amazing so that was fun and again you can kind of look pre-use it's a good shout out uh if i was going to do one pre pre the title run car was the one i looked at then i went back and rewatch the fight less fun than i remember though i will say caro's still an ass kicker dude and carro we're going to have a on Caro. What? I said we're going to.

Caro was sick, man. I love Caro, but. Oh, I think there's enough. Carro was nasty with it. Ripping Caboros on GSP, like multiple times. This was, caro was awesome for a period of time. Caro is getting one,

and Steve BPO just never will. Never will. I want this to be clear to America. Neither will Jared Cannoneer. So let's just, there's some dudes who just don't get them. And Steve A good. Catching a stray.

Steep A. Jared's come up a lot in discussions this week. So unnecessary. As we're talking about the middle way, and like, you guys are forgetting about Jared Cannon here. I'm not, trust me, I'm not forgetting.

I am choosing to ignore that man. So, Carl, I did consider. Did you have any others that you wanted to mention here, okay? Again, it's just interesting watching his pre-UFC stuff

because he was kind of like, I think there's a misconception that he was like Taekuan-doing people to death and shit before he came to the UFC. And like, he could clearly strike. But from day one, And his thing was like, yeah, if I can take you down, I'm going to take you down and beat you up.

And he just did that on a, he was just doing that to kind of overmatched competition early on. So that's why he was getting finishes. But his fighting style was very much the same. So it was interesting to see the blueprint. And it's just later when guys, he ran to guys that he couldn't take down that he got to show off some of his striking two. So but yeah, nothing, nothing I think, no, I don't think you would single out one individual pre-UFC flight to put on his Mount Rushmore. I don't think so. Yeah, the, the Taekwondo GSP narrative came about one because, you know, he did do Taekwondo.

or whatever but mainly because he beat mat he used his ass twice with tyco window and then got tapped once and it's like oh but secretly he's always been a guy who mixes the martial arts i'm sorry okay sorry to say that about your countrymen i know you hate it for this episode we'll allow it support for this show comes from the audible original the downloaded two ghosts in the machine the earth only has a few days left roscow cadulian and the rest of the phoenix have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian

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the Mount Rushmore legitimately an hour and 50 minutes into the Kimball episode. It took us so long. I mean, we blitzed through the rest. of everything in that episode, but the Kimbo one took so long. Was the, what the hell was that guy's name? Dada, was that number of, Oh, of course. We spent like half an hour talking about just that one,

just that one of our thousand. I want to be clear, that was probably the reason we did a Kimbo was so I could talk about Taha because of how much I love that freaking fight. Good God. But now we're on to the rest of the categories, boys and girls. This is where we get to have some fun.

And we're starting, uh, coincidentally enough, with a category named after George St. Pierre himself. Not so much for the category, but because GSP has a terrific quote that fit very perfectly with what we're trying to accomplish in that category.

I'm speaking, of course, about the I'm not impressed by your performance award. I'm not impressed by your performance. This is for the low spot of fighters' career. This is, you know, the one that you weren't impressed by what they did. Named after George St. Pierre famously coming in and telling Matt Hughes that he was not

impressed by Matt Hughes's performance, I believe that you can put a lot of things here. And I put four different fights under this umbrella just as a place to talk about things because I would like to. But I think that you're just picking two. It's an A or B, whichever side you're falling on. I don't know how you gentlemen were go. I chose the low-hanging fruit of the bunch. Matt Sarah, USC-69, when George loses.

his freshly won well-to-weight title to some dude off tough. Because again, we've talked about it, you know, the community has talked about a lot for many reasons. This is the biggest upset in the history of the sport. Nick, I think you mentioned that earlier. I don't think this upset will ever be top because Matt Sarah coming in, got a title shot because he won tough four. Also, shouldn't have won tough four robbed Chris Lytle in the finale to get,

here. Career lightweight comes up, you know, a BJJ practitioner. This by all intents and purposes should be a showcase bout for George St. Pierre as he begins his title reign and he gets knocked out in the first freaking round. Stunning the world tilted off its axis for a moment. I don't know what happened, but I think there's one other option you could go with here. To me, this was maybe the easiest I've ever had in this category for the clear number one. one answer. It's Matt Sarah. Do you gentlemen agree? Yeah, it has to be there. I'll let Nick talk about this bit more because, Jed, you and I have said what we have to say about this. We've wrote an article about this about almost four years ago. It was got it's M.A.fling.com,

the ultimate underdog, colon, why Matt Sarah being George St. Pierre is still M.A's greatest upset. I think we did it after. I don't remember why we had to do this. It always comes out after crazy upset. Oh, my gosh. Do we do it after Pena? No, that 2020, this had to be before that. This is ever before that. Yes. I don't remember what it was that prompt. It might have been an anniversary. I'm not sure.

I don't know when we'd have done it. I'm glad we did it. I hope people refer to this document often because every time there's an upset. There's a greatest upset ever. There's greatest upset ever. And it's like, there's been a ton of great upsets and I'm not downplaying them. But, man, again, we mathematically broke down like why this upset is so great and why it can never be matched.

And it's fine. Maybe it has. Nothing's ever going to top it. And you can't because, like we said, the circumstances of getting a title fight off the ultimate fighter and just like how. title shots were sort of handed out around that time, like how much lighter the talent pool was. There was just less options. So it just made sense.

Like it didn't seem weird to hand someone a title fight off of the ultimate fighter. The odds, I think Matt Serra was like minus 1,300. I'm sorry, GSP was a minus 1,300 favorite, depending where you looked. You'll never see those numbers again in a title fight. I don't think so anyway. I think we might have seen it almost with Valentina and some of her opponents, but generally very rare. So, yeah, again, I don't need to go. all over this again. It's still the greatest upset ever. And yes, a low moment for GSP,

which is so weird that we can sort of look back on and laugh about. And even GSP can reflect on in a thoughtful way because of how great his career ended up being. But that has to be it. Nick, do you agree? You know, I was kind of leading towards the grappling loss to Leonardo Santos at ADC 5, 2005. That's number four on my list. I have four fights and that's number four. That's another category. You got flying armbard. That's another category. Come on.

That's another category. I, well, when you said four jet, I was wondering, because like, he doesn't, I mean, let's be honest, USP doesn't have many losses. But yes, okay. So Matt Sarah is my number one. I think as I was listening to you talk about a jet, it became even more clearly my number one.

I think, I don't think there's really a case, but I think an arguable number two would be after Johnny Hendricks. You know, this is a fight where not everybody thought GSP won. In fact, probably most people thought he lost. And the post-fight visuals, you know, that famous photo of him holding

the ice to his bruised and battered head. And I don't recall exactly what Dana White said about the fight and the result after, but I don't think he was very, you know, he was so mad. Yeah, he did not praise GSP by any means. And I think most of that was because he is his number one pound for pound superstar you know uh left or whatever

but yeah that that was up there but i think you do have to go mad sarah just because for for all the reasons you spoke about i mean a career lightweight coming off the ultimate fighter um taking on this this new champion who was supposed to be the next champion for the next 10 years and you ended up being out but yeah just like the way it happened you know the knockout and yeah that you know there's no lower for for gsp i would like to clarify i would like to clarify though i believe the ice holding his head is the caught from the condid fight not the johnny hendricks fight if i'm not mistaken i could be wrong i'm pretty sure it is i have no idea i think you're wrong but let me you will Nick, you can search that while we talk about the Johnny Hendricks fight because when I said that there are two choices, I think Matt Sarah's a runaway, but the other choice, I believe, is pretty clearly Johnny Hendricks would be the one B here. For a lot of the reasons Nick said. And Nick, I'll add on to you here, Dana was livid, just about as mad as you've ever seen Dana at a post-fight presser. Not just because, oh, Johnny Hendricks won that fight and the judges took it from him. Also, could.

not be more angry about how GSP walked away, because at the time, we didn't even know if he had. He just said, I'm going to take a little break right now, which when I say I'm going to take a little break, that means 15 minutes. It doesn't mean four freaking years, you know. GSP was very unclear about what was happening. Like, we sort of interpreted it as, okay, is a break a year? Is it a break, you know, six months? Is a break of retirement? We're not really sure. and Dana was like he's not taking a break. At the post presser, I distinctly remember Dana being like, yeah, no, that's not going to happen.

We're going to run this back. It's like, okay, I don't think that's how that works, Dana, but I guess we'll see. And if you go back and rewatch the fight, I mean, A.K., have you ever done a robbery review on this fight? I did. I did. And I, thank God, I don't think a lot of people read this one, thankfully.

I don't know if it was early on, so robber reviews hadn't gotten much traction because let me tell you something you thought people in Toronto were mad at me after UFC 297 Sean Strickland Presser they would have been rioting after I said that that fight was a robbery it is I gave I gave round one pretty clearly to Hendricks and for me that was the deciding round it was it really all came down to round one deciding round I thought it was pretty clearly Johnny Hendricks and I've rewatched it several times and I'm biased I love GSP and I was like, I think Hendrix

wins this round. I actually was having a struggling to find a way to score for GSP. So yeah, to me and my mind, that was kind of a robbery. Not kind of a robbery. Sorry, there's no kind of. That was a robbery. I have a foot clock on this. It is right, by the way. I'm wrong as we usual. The ice

was from Condit. It's weird. Because he got kicked. Got kicked in the head. Yeah, it's. Any dice after that. However, the visuals at the post Hendricks Presser are not pretty either. No, it's very similar,

actually. His face is all first up. It's all first up. Looks the same in a lot of fights. It's really does. We'll touch on that later. Yeah. At one point in time,

I was like, this isn't a robbery. I think it's... Same. I was like, I'll get out of here. Like, I wouldn't have any issue with Hendricks winning,

but at the same time, I was like, that first round's really close and competitive. I wouldn't rewatch it again. I've watched this fight many times, but I watched it again for this. And yeah, it's bad.

It's robbery. That's a Hendricks round. That's a Hendricks round. GSP, I think, I will say that as I rewashed it, well, something that did jump out at me is Rogan is really bad on the mic, and he is overselling Johnny Hendricks way too much, saying, like, every time Johnny Hendricks touches him, he's like, oh, my God, I think GSP might be dying. And that's pretty ridiculous.

But even removing that, I do think John. Hendricks is doing the more effective stuff. The elbows on the takedown. They're landing similarly, but he's landing better shots, certainly with more power. You know, that fourth round, if you want to say that Johnny Hendricks didn't do enough with the takedown, I think that's still even wrong. He was clearly kind of working on top, even if it's not great. It's one of those things where fight was competitive, but based on the scoring, Hendricks

won three rounds and should have had the biggest. moment of his career and instead ended up losing it. Also, Mario Yamasaki, awful referee, glad he's no longer doing it. It was really bad in that fight. So to me, that's one and two. Nick, I also did, like I said, I had Leandro Silva. Getting Flying Arm Bard is tough scenes. Leonardo Santos. Yeah, sorry. Leonardo Silva does Santos. It's all of them. There's many of the names. Flying Arm bar, that was my number four. My number three. BJ Penn? No, no, no. No. No. Probably that he was lost.

Okay. Nope, no, nope. Interesting. Because BJ Penn, he, look, I'm as big of BJ fan as there's ever been. And there was a long period of my life when I said that BJ beat George St. Pierre the first time. BJ did not beat George St. Pierre the first time. A competitive fight, much like the Johnny Hendricks fight, BJ lost two rounds.

Like, he won the first round and was very competitive in the third. It's not insane to give him the third round. But it's George won the fight, not a robbery. But GSP went to the hospital. GSP went to the hospital. BJ went to the press conference. One of the greatest quotes in the MMA history, which we'll touch on a little bit later. I mean, an exceptional freaking quote.

I just wanted to put this because I feel like there was no way anyone else was going to talk about it. And I wanted to slide it in here. It still boggles my mind to this day that George St. Pierre couldn't finish Dan Hardy. He chose not to. Yeah, and that's bad. That's why I'm not impressed. Because I'll say, I'm not impressed against Matt Serra because you got knocked out by Matt Sarah.

But Matt Sayer is a good fighter and sometimes weird stuff happens. Johnny Hendricks, though he fell off a cliff in Mike Malott fashion, only was career instead of in one round. Very good fighter at his peak. Dan Hardy was never a very good fighter. He was an okay fighter. and GSP just chose to not finish him. Like he was so risk-averse that he was like,

Dan Hardy, a guy who's not really a threat to finishing anyone. I cannot risk this whatsoever. I will just play the safest possible game. It's the least impressed they've ever been with GSP, not because of the choices he was making. So I wanted to make sure that got shouted out in this category because that is a historically heinous. performance that should be roundly booed because it's Dan freaking Hardy.

Did you want to break his arm? Is that what you wanted to just sick up? Yes, I did. Or just take Mountain beat the hell out of him like you did to a bunch of other people. You could beat the shit out of BJ pin, but you couldn't beat the shit out of Dan Hardy. He wanted to come up for round five. That's not his fault. He wanted BJ to go the distance.

Come on. Come on. This is, those 80CC match. He does not. to live with the memory of snapping another human being's arm. You cannot put a press on that. GSP, you did the right thing. Dan Hardy and you were probably friends for life because you did not break his arm. I think one more note on the Matt Sarah lost that sort of, you know, we know it's number one, but just to put it even more so into that low point of someone's career is

he had, you know, his stock was rocket high like going into that fight. He was coming off to Matt Hughes Headkick, champion of the world of the Walter 8 Division. And after that Matt Serra fight, I mean, I wasn't around in the MMA world, so I can't speak to how I felt or how anybody felt. But I would imagine all of a sudden how we perceive GSP as a fighter, as a potential contender changed. I mean, did we think he was still young? So did we think there was a good chance he would one day bounce back and still be champ

and still be, you know, top Walt Wade and maybe. even one of the better fighters ever. Yeah, maybe. But there's probably also a lot of people that were like, this is who we thought was going to rule over the division forever. And he just got smoked by Matt Sarah. So, I mean, yeah, just that. And then everything else you talked about,

it's clear number one. I'll say people are a little less react. I feel like there were, I mean, there's just less fans. So, I mean, you're getting less random, no asshole noise. But I do think people were a little less reactive back then. If that happened today, oh, GSP, good Lord. I mean, GSP shut down, shut down your social. I mean, you're just get, he is getting the, the John addict treatment.

He is getting 10 million dickheads tweeting him, y'all, you're never going to make it. You're, oh, you're trying. You cost me money. Like, it's interesting because, yeah, this was a different time. And I'm sure, I'm sure you're right, Nick, that there was people who were like, whoa, like, what a disappointment. Like, he didn't just lose. He got, he got knocked out by this guy who shouldn't even been the cage for them. So I'm sure there was that.

But it was a little bit less, I think, because there was no social media. I don't know. Jed, you were on the forum, so you probably have a better idea of it. I was. I can tell you exactly what was going on. Yeah, let me know. Because if they had been Twitter, it would have been real bad for GSP and GSP fans at that moment. Like, I can't even think about it. You're absolutely correct.

It would have been awful at the moment. What it ended up happening is there was a little bit of questioning GSP entirely. Mostly for the next several years, there was just George St. Pierre a fighter. Does he want to do this? there was a long controversy about whether he tapped out two strikes, which I don't believe that he did, but there are certain images where you can watch Matt Serra beating the hell out of him. And because of the way he's beating the hell out of him, George's arm keeps flopping and it sort of looks like he's tapping to strikes. And so there weren't a lot of people who were like, oh, GSP sucks.

What a bum. It was just like, oh, this dude's not built for this. but even amongst that, it was broadly understood that George was better than Matt Serra. This was, I think, the first time that I really reckoned with. Okay, so the guy who has the belt, deserves to have the belt,

won it justly, and is in no way the best fighter in the world. And we've come to have that happen a lot more in the UFC these days, but yeah, I think everyone would have picked GSP to beat Matt Sarah in a rematch three days later. But this was a stigmatizing loss for a certain subject of the fans because it was just like,

oh, he doesn't have that dog in him. You know, that was before that phrase existed. So it was a better time for you, AK. But, yeah, he's, that was the genesis of he's an athlete, I'm a fighter from BJ, because he tapped to strikes like a coward or some shit.

So, undeniably, if this happened in the day and age, it would have been substantially worse and it ended up being. But also, that's, you know, why GSP starts seeing a sports psychologist and stuff like this. So, uh, fantastic. Anyone have any other fights that want to throw in the I'm not impressed? I chose not to put the Hughes fights here, or the Hughes loss here.

Again, I already explained the first BJ. The Hughes loss, that's just, that's a mistake that happens on your 22, man. You know, you're 23 years old. You're fighting a world champion, one of the best fighters in history. and you're beating his ass and sometimes you make mistakes. So I left that fight being very impressed by George St. Pierre, frankly.

So I couldn't put it here. Anything else I want to put here before we move on? Nope. I think we've covered it at all. All right. That brings us to the Who the fuck is that guy award. Who the fuck is that guy? This is for the strangest fighter that George St. Pierre ever faced in his

career weirdest artists. You can kind of have a little leeway. And fun fact, this award was previously named the Ivan Mangevar Award for weirdest party you've ever faced because Ivan Mingevar fought George St. Pierre for George St. Pierre's debut. Ivan Mingevar, I used to say this every time I introduce this category. But if you don't know, Ivan Mingevar was largely a career bantam weight who, you know, fought in TriStar, Montreal, ended up fighting George St. Pierre.

and in their debuts. GSP gets a win. Super weird win. You can go watch this fight on Fight Pass. I don't know if you guys took the opportunity to do that, but it's a very inauspicious start to GSP's career as he's beating up a Ivan Minjavar was probably a little bit too small to be doing this. But he ends up on bottom for a while,

sort of flips position near the end of the round. Is landing some punches in ground and pound, but they're not big. referee clearly checks on Minjavar, are you okay? And Minjavar says I'm okay, but the ref is like, you're not okay and stops it. And I believe that the referee misheard Minjavar, and so it's a very odd finish, but it ends up going down as a TKO to punches in the last second of the first round, had frankly been fairly competitive and was clearly a terrible stoppage. So I've been Minjew.

Sounds like some Johnny Walker, Magamai, Uncle. I have silly business. It was very silly business. And it was clearly my number one choice list. I do have a few more to mention as well. But let's head to you. I mean, one, the category was originally named after I've been tovar. So it just feels like I had to put it here.

But we'll get to my other ones later because, Nick, what did you have for the Who the Fuck is that guy award? Okay. So my who the fuck is that guy winner. It's a lot less out there than I've. Evan Menjad. Menjavar. Menjavar. Can't even say the guy's name. The kids these days don't know Ivan. I know. It's tough. But, okay, so I went, I'm curious to see how you guys feel about this. You may agree. You may completely disagree. I really don't know. I went Michael Bisbing.

Just because, Bisbing, you know, throughout GSP's championship reign throughout his entire career, I mean, the idea of George St. Pierre fighting Michael Bisbing was on nobody's radar. Michael Bisbing was a middle of the road, fringe top 15, fringe top 10, middleweight, fought it light heavy maybe a few times. And GSP was just running through everybody at 170. We wanted GSP Anderson Silva. That was the Walterweight middleweight super fight we wanted. Michael Bisbing beat Anderson Silva and then just took that thunder.

He did not. Michael Bisping got knocked out by Anderson Silva. I know, I know. I know. Absolutely. I agree. but on topology sadly it does say Michael Bisbing split a unanimous decision I think

but yeah I went Bisbing just because you know the stars had to align and they did align not because this was a fight that everybody had wanted to see for the last decade but because this was GSB's easiest path to two division status in the very the very end of his career the twilight of his career so yeah this was just kind of a fight that came out of nowhere and yeah that's my pick it's not a bad choice because certainly if you are making

if you're asking these questions in 2015 you've been like no that's a weirdest fight of ever gsb is going to come back to fight bisming why that would be there's never a fight that was on anyone's radar like you said nowhere at any point during joseps tileron did a single human being think wow wouldn't it be cool if you went up and fought michael bisman except one Bisping who, you know, that one time they trained together, George beat him. And I remember that that would be like part of the buildup of that fight is George, George beat me once in training and I never, never forgot. I always wanted a chance at him.

Like, okay, Mike, sure, sure, that's what happened? It's ridiculous. Okay, what did you have here? This is where I put Leonardo Santos because I think this was pretty common knowledge, but I totally forgot about this. I'm sure every time Leonardo Santos, and I've watched all Leonardo Santos's fights. And I have to imagine every time he stepped into the cage. By the way, he has a grappling win over George St. Pierre, 2005.

So I feel like this is common knowledge. I don't know why when I was looking at this category. I completely forgot that this was a thing. Shoutouts to Jitzmagine.com, Sabrina Phillips of JISMaggazine.com, who does a really great write-up of the two matches that George had at ADCC 2005. He also, the first round, he fought a guy named Otto. Oops, where was it? Otto.

Olson, Otto Olson. That's probably the weird. We try to look into more about Otto Olson. Otto Olson's a three-time NCAA champion for Michigan. Oh, not champion, all-American, not champion. Oh, that's very impressive. I think he got second was his highest finish, but a Michigan standout wrestler for thing. Because I did look into Otto Olson. But GSP was nine and one, a few fights removed from the Matt Hughes loss and then got armed barred, as you guys said, by Leonard of Santos. And never. Never said, I'm done. You know, I'm good. Competitive grappling. I did it off my bucket list.

I happened a month after he beat Jason Miller, UFC 52. It was, I mean, yeah, this is one of those things that was definitely common knowledge at the time. Also one of those things I entirely forgot about until I started research. I was like, oh, yeah. Because that was obviously a clip on the internet of, hey, you guys want to see something cool. This dude's about a flying onboard GSP because we still knew GSP was very, very good. and he goes to ADCC and gets tapped pretty quickly. But yeah, reasonable.

I don't want to rain on your parade. Are you going to, is your pick going to be one of his three opponents without a Wikipedia entry, or can I do a quick drop on them? So my other three are two of those. Oh, sweet. I just have fun little anecdotes about a couple of them. No, I would love to hear which. Just tell me which one you have a drop on.

I feel like you're going to mention this anyway, but I have to shout out all three because they're nicknames, according topology. Yes. Loaf. Loaf is the best one. That's all I have. Justin Brutman,

all I have for him is that his nickname is Loaf. Loaf, the Gladiator, and Wildman. These are the most generic jobber nicknames. So here's the thing about Thomas Denny. Thomas Denny's Wildman, and I honestly think it's a bit of a travesty that Thomas Denny does not have a Wikipedia page.

Thomas Denny was not a great fighter, but he fought like, I don't know, 50 some odd times or some shit. He was around the scene in the time, like doing, fought in WEC. Did he ever get a UFC bout? It wouldn't shock me if you fought some of the UFC. I'm not sure. Thomas Diggins was just a dude that you kind of knew. I think he fought in like Elite X.

He definitely fought Nick Diaz once. Oh, he has one WEC appearance. He lost to the immortal Alex Carlexus. I was going to say, like he was around in King of the King of the King. cage and that sort of whole thing. Thomas Denny was just like a dude who if you were watching MMA in the mid-2000s, probably saw him fight at

various points in time. I'm genuinely surprised he doesn't have a Wikipedia page. So much so that I made sure that this was the Thomas Denny I was thinking of and it wasn't like another one. But shouts to Thomas Denny, you're great. Wildman is a

terrific name for you. Loaf is maybe the best nickname of ever freaking her. heard Justin Bruck shouts to Justin Bruchman

I also Travis Galbraith which was what the gladiator is that what it was yeah he's the gladiator I believe he's the gladiator yeah

I brought him in because as I was diving in one this fight is quite funny if you watch it because GSP sort of immediately takes him down and gets into side control and Galbraith is just holding

like a lockdown with both arms around his shoulders and GSP gets his elbow in between. He's trying to elbow him, but he can't create separation. So he just lifts his body up with Galbraith and slams him down repeatedly to the thing. Kind of like how he did that to Jake Shields with his groin, or maybe that was Tiago Alps. He just does that with an elbow, which is quite funny. But Galbraith, I put in because if you go to IMDB, Mr. Travis Galbraith has a couple of

of whatever you call those, a couple of spots. One, for Elite XE, because he did fight in Elite XE, so they've got that. But also, he played hallway zombie in Resident Evil Red Falls. Never seen this movie. I know what the Resident Evil franchise is, but A.K., I see your sort of consternation that you are clearly looking this up on IMD. I am correct, am I not? You are correct.

I'm assuming this is the same Travis Galbraith. Definitely the same traffic because it's an elite XC. Oh, you're right. Oh, you're right. You're making that connection. So that was a fight between two future Hollywood superstars. Absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, yes. But I assume that it is the same one. I did not look up Resident Evil Red Falls to try and confirm visually, but he, he's, they're crediting him for Elite XE, which he definitely fought at Elite in this time. So I think it's the same Travis Colbray. Can I give a quick amusing zombie casting aside here? Of course. A friend of mine, a friend of a friend, their father, he's missing one of his, part of his arm, one of his arms.

Oh, he's a terrific zombie then. He has been cast. He back in, I want to say in China, this is coming up, so ignorant. but where he lives. He has been cast several times as zombie, as like war scenes where someone's in the war and missing a limb. Yeah, so he actually has been an extra in multiple films because of his I mean, that's making lemonade right there out of lemons.

Just what a particular window. I also put Dave Strasser here who was again, a guy who was around the scene at the time fought a bunch and thing. I mainly just put this because if you go watch it, it's quite amusing. I always love this period of time in MMA. You still get a little bit of this in like KSW where fighters will paint sponsors on their body

and GSP has Golden Palace.com painted across his back. I think the only time GSP ever had something like that and it's super trashy and quite amusing to see the future goat of M.M.A. Doing that thing. I think you guys have anything else to put here. Should we move on? Let's move right along. I'm good.

Our next category then. Our next category, the Randolplex Award. This is for the best single career highlight. This, ladies and gentlemen, was extremely difficult because, as we sort of mentioned earlier, GSP doesn't have a lot of career highlights to choose from. So I already mentioned it at the top. I went with the Matt Hughes head kick. I think it is the best holiday he had because he doesn't have a lot.

You could also convince me that maybe, like, like one particular moment from some other fights is there. But GSP headkicking Matt Hughes is my answer, and I don't have any other honorable mentions either. What about you, fellas? I'm going head kick or the nut kicks from the same fight, like as I said before. Yeah. Caught them twice, but not a point taken away.

Just affirm, like, hey, come on, George. Like, you know, get the, get the watch. You could make a good career out of kicking Matt Hughes low. I just asked Frank Tray. I was going to say Frank Trick as well. And also, I think the knockdown of Bisping, the knockdown before the submission would be up there. It's almost, it would probably be number one if he had actually knocked him out or finished him with strikes. It would probably be number.

But the knockdown plus the chokeout is also a pretty sweet combination. So there's just such a big gap between them because it's like 90 seconds of him just wamping on Bisping before Bisping rolls and gives up the back. So to me, this is a little too much of space for that. Like that would fit on a TikTok, but it's. it wouldn't fit on a vine, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, I think the best highlight of his crew is probably objectively the headkick on Hughes.

But one answer that I didn't want to toss out there, like it, I guess it probably wouldn't be my number one, but it's very close. Would be the knees against Matt Sarah. We touch on them earlier. They're just freaking brutal, man. And I mean,

that was 15 years ago or however many years ago that was. And my dad is very, like impartial to, I mean, he's a big GSP fan, of course, but he's very impartial to knees of the body. And to this day, we watch fights and he always says in certain situations when fighters are on top and in a dominant position, why the heck aren't you knee to the body? Because of how brutal and how much damage

they can do. And so while it's not some spinning kick or a spinning back fist or even in just a simple head kick like he did against Matt Hughes, those knees of the body, a fight, you know, a fight finishing sequence and needs the body, those got to be right up there. Those were, those were devastating. Yeah, I love that choice. I love that choice. And I think it's such a, it's such a great visual of dominance. And you know, one of the reasons we don't see more often is it's a pretty easy way to lose position, right? If you're, if you're trying to line those up, your opponent has a lot of

options of how to get out of there. But in this situation, GSP was controlling him so badly. And again, so much bigger, so much stronger. His technique is so flawless that, yes, he could get away with just kneeing a man in the body however many times until the referee is like, I have to save this person's insides. Otherwise, I might be an accessory to murder. So, yeah, it's a great visual. It is, that's actually a really good choice. The visual is fantastic.

Yeah. It's a great choice. I didn't honestly even think about putting it here, and that's probably a misstep on my part because we talked about it. It's terrific. Poor, poor Matt Sarah. She didn't have ever, maybe he wouldn't have ever knocked GSP out if he knew would lay in store for him afterwards.

I have to imagine I was a rough few days following this particular event. But, you know, 2024 and Matt Sayers, I'm looking for a fight, and GSP's not. So who's the real winner?

GSP is the real winner. I don't. GSP, other categories, GSP's doing just fine outside of fighting, doing GSP's on, are you several better shoes than looking for a fight? He's in the Avengers.

That was pretty. good. He was in, no, he was in Captain America or whatever. He was in Captain America Winter Soldier and the Captain of the Falcon and whatever Winter Soldier show. And maybe he still gets to come back, you know, like they recycle people all the time. Why not? Also, he had like a Amazon series for a hot minute where he, did you not know this? A.K.'s looking at me puzzledly. He, he had a paleontology series where he just like went to Diggs. think you can it's still on Amazon. I did know this.

It's like, it's like a one-off. This series? I think it's like several episodes. So like a mini series or whatever. I remember. This was Discovery Channel, wasn't it? Discovery Channel.

It may be undiscovered. Maybe it was originally Discovery. It is on Amazon Prime right now. You can go watch it. And there are like several episodes of him going to digs with like paleontologists. I mean, there's very much ties into a category coming up later. It does. It in fact does.

We're not quite to that category, but we're on to the next one, which is recently renamed. Previously, this was left-leg hospital, right-leg hospital, left-like cemetery. Now it is the, you got baby nuts, dada. I show my nuts right now. Let me see your nuts. You got baby nuts, da-da. You got baby nuts. I bet you my nuts bigger than yours.

Come. For the best quote by or about the fighter, I renamed it very specifically. I want to be clear. I renamed this so in every future episode, I could just redrop that audio into this spot right now. I put, AK, you haven't heard the damn Kimbo yet.

I put baby nuts in there like six times. This is the best quote. Not enough. Not enough. Really not enough. I think this is a category ripe for choosing. I think there are a ton of options in here. I have one that I picked because I felt compelled to.

We named a category after this, and it's certainly, I think the quote I think of first when I think of George St. Pierre. So my winner is I am not impressed by your performance, which he famously said to Matt Hughes, setting up there soon to be title fight. But I got a number of other ones. I want to go to y'all first.

Did either of you agree with me on I'm not impressed by your performance? Did you have something else here? That was mine. I honestly didn't even look into, Others. I know GSP has said a lot, and I know I'm excited to hear what you guys picked or what the, what the honorable mentions are, because, yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time. I knew this was the most famous. This was the most iconic, most memorable, and it's the winner for me. It's funny. I was reading an article about it just earlier, and apparently he went into the doctor and he didn't even really know what Matt Hughes had said. Dana kind of just tried to rile them up like, hey, go in there and tell the fight, say something. And that's what, you know, nice guy, GSP said. And, man, almost 20 years later, you know, we're still talking about it.

So, yeah, that's the winner for me. I'm also, I just sent you to your Twitter. I DM'd you a video that I sent to AK earlier. I think about this probably once a month. It is a video. So it's a music video someone made using the I'm not impressed by your performance. And it's the funniest thing in MMA history at that point. I love it so much.

AK is looking at me judgmentally as if I'm a simpleton for my respect for this very, very silly song. But I enjoyed a great deal. AK, do you agree? Are you not impressed with my performance right now? Rarely am I, but only because I hold you to such a high standard shit. All three of us, yeah, we're in agreement. This is the quote.

This is one of the top five most important, most repeated quotes in MMA history. It's hilarious. It is spontaneous, as you guys just said. It's quintessentially GSP. No one else is getting away with saying what he said in that moment and not coming off as a total prick. There's an element, of course, of, you know, imperfect English as well, which helps it. I think he said in interviews later, like, oh, that's not like exactly what I meant. to say, like I was, but again, like you said, he didn't have a plan.

He just was sort of told to go in and say something. And it's that mix of, I think if he had had something prepared, you don't get this magical moment, right? So there's no way to replicate it. And it just so, and in a way, it didn't really encapsulate though what he meant to say, because he wants that, he wants to fight Matt. You know, he wants to fight Matt Hughes. And this is like the sneakiest, like, insult one could say to another fighter.

and he doesn't even mean it, and that makes it hurt, like, twice as much. So I love this saying. I think I don't know, I must say this at least once a week, maybe more in various circumstances. I use that a ton. It's so useful. It's such a useful, like phrase. Deeply meaningful. Yeah, he has many.

Incredibly meaningful. If this happened to, like, one, if Connor did this tomorrow, it would be all anyone talked about for 12 years. But he's not pulling it off like this, though. He can't. No. He would have to add something else in. He cannot do it the way that GSP did it.

Because there was still such a sense of innocence behind it. Yes, thank you. That's someone else important. Innocence, but yes. It's not broken English, but it does have that, like, heavy French-Canadian tinge to it. So it almost feels like he's not even all the way saying what he's saying. It's terrific. And while we're saying things that other fighters couldn't get away with, I just want to say my other choice.

One of my other choices real quick, the after he beats Trigg, he begs Matt Hughes for a rematch. I'm sorry. He beats Shirk. I'm sorry. He beats Shirk. Sean Shirk. And he's begging for a rematch. He's on his knees. He's on his knees. He's begging for a rematch. If that happened today, that fighter would be mocked endlessly. It would be George Cuck, St. Pierre, or whatever stupid ass buzzwords you want to throw out there. I think it's exactly what you said. God. It would, again, it's so hard to explain to him in the moment. And because it's him, it didn't seem weird. Other people did this after this.

Like, other people resorted to the on my knees begging Dana, please. That is a real thing that happened. He's a taste maker, GSP is. But you can't get away with that now. With the way the fan base is now, oh, you're not getting away with that. You do that, you are, no, sir. You're just getting memed and made fun of, and you're definitely not getting a television shot or whatever the hell it is your ass.

Yeah, please. It's a great callout. It's not the number two. The number two, though, you did mention earlier. It's BJ talking about the fight with him. It's after that fight, he went to the hospital. I went to the bar. That quote is just awesome.

And I love that quote for many, many years. Number three, I don't know if you guys were found as much joy as I did with this one. But, you know, I'm not impressed by your performance. It was a little too early to really hit the zenith of internet memory. George St. Pierre talking ahead of the Nick Diaz fight with the, I have a lot of, I have my own demons in my head. People have no idea how dark it is in my mind. And the darkness, the George St. Pierre darkness was memed infinitely in the best ways possible. I thought you were going to talk about him giving Nick Diaz business advice. No, no, no. Nick, I have a portfolio. I have a lot of

passive income. You need to invest in multiple things and then you will not have the, and I'm like, what is happening? What is George doing? George had a couple of moments like that. Like, against Michael Bispy, he'd be like, hey, are you okay? You're drunk. Are you, are you like good? Are you like, are you like healthy? I just had some really low-key savage moments, but no, the, I go to dark places in my mind

and the fun the internet had with it. Tommy Tohold probably exists in large part because of that clip and the ability to just make jokes of you guys don't know the dark places in my, mind one time I crossed the street not at the stoplight oh the darkness it's just the most fun to make fun of him for that so that was there um also I've hit him with your groin uh Greg Jackson famously yelled at him when GSP is torn his groin fighting Jake shields and it's like no this is Tiago olvis sorry Tiago alves and he's like yeah I'm pretty sure I tore my groin in the way that you would say when you know you've torn your groin and don't want to keep fist fighting a man and

Greg Savage is just not having it none of that please sir hit him with your groin and then he does that's quite amusing uh and then the last one is not nearly as funny as any of the other ones but uh i do think it's the most savage gsb has ever been um and i don't think it's intentional but he's this is a believe not 100 but i believe this was after the dan hardy fight and he says this very matter a faculty in an interview. A lot of times I fight guys and after a few rounds, they accept my dominance. They aren't fighting to win anymore. They're fighting not to lose.

I've seen it many times. And that's how he's explaining why he couldn't finish Dan Hardy. I'm just like, that's freaking cold, man. Like, I fight dudes and they just accept that I am better than them. That's some fucking cold shit. So that's my list. Do you guys have anything else you want to throw in here? No.

I think we got or done. you could pick so many things just from like interviews he's done he's done skits he's done skits too like the joking joking about the uh what do he was joking about like oh yes i did cheat before the the uh the nick dyes fight or something and there's his whole skit about he's just he's a funny guy and and as his english got better he got even funnier like he was able to really like express these sort of subtler ideas and stuff he's just a great interview and i make fun listen we crap on the joe rogan podcast all the time his his interview with joe rogan i think they've only done the one. I'd pretty sure extend it. It's like one of the best

MMA fighter interviews I've ever seen. It's just so fascinating. I could listen to GSP talk about anything all day. The whole aliens thing. Yeah, yeah. The aliens thing is a little weird in that because he doesn't he never saw it entirely. He doesn't say it in the same way that Joe says he says it afterwards and it's like GSP has brain damage and shouldn't fight anymore. He believes in aliens. That's not really what went down. But it also added to the making aliens memes about him, which was quite fun for a large beard of my MMA fandom. Our next category, the Fat or Sweater of Absolute Victory Award.

This is for a piece of memorabilia you could take from the fighter to add it to the Hall of Fame of your own personal collection. I got one answer. It's a bit of a gag answer. So I'd like to start with you all first. A.K. historically not your strongest category. You've had some interesting ones. GSP does not have anything that jumps off the page to me.

as like, really? I know one that so I'm, I'm excited to hear what you guys have then. Nick, let's say it, let's do the count of three. Let's say it at the same time.

All right. Three. Ready? Three, two, one. Headband. The gay and headband.

Yes. Yeah. Losers lame. Come on. I always pick something weird. For once, I'm picking the normal thing. It's one of the chalk.

Yeah, it's an iconic fit. It's an iconic fit. What a grown man is taking, wearing his frigging, taekwanda ghee or karate ghee at karate I assume his karate to a frigging professional fight when he's already an established

MMA star he's like no I am still I am true to my roots I'm bringing my ghee with me and this dope-ass headband and he pulled it off to me it's even more of the headband than the ghee itself sure I don't know it's just like the iconic look so yeah if I don't care too much about memorabilia let's be honest but if I did it'd be the headband and nice little GSB autograph

and off to Kigi-I-Go. Would you wear the headband? No, I'd sell it for like $100. I'm kidding. Losers. Maybe. A thousand? You absolute losers.

Kio-Kusian headbands. That's what everyone's going to say. Okay. So what's your gay answer? Oh, no, it's a great answer. It's actually the true answer because not only will I now have this in the collection, I'll also solve one of the great crimes in MMM. history. I want the

grease. The grease that he used when he fought BJ the second time that prevented BJ from getting the rubber guard going. It was a critical part of BJ Penn's game plan and they couldn't because George was greased down. He was slipperier than an eel.

Just couldn't get any traction with the legs. So give me the grease from the UFC 94 travesty of justice that happened. Thanks for having me on. I'll talk to you guys later. I think you mean the oily salad dressing that he ate for two weeks straight ahead of the fight, Jed,

which is perfectly legal, by the way. So I don't know what you're talking about. He just happens to be secreting extra oil. You see when they greased his head down, then they wiped it off with the towel, and then they rub the towel on his back. So he'd be very greasy. Incidental. If you all don't know what we're talking about following UFC 94,

the first time I was ever ashamed to be a BJ pin fan occurred. when after getting just a world-class asswhip and put on him, BJN camp came out saying, and even filing a formal appeal, I believe, under the premise that George St. Pierre was greasing, and so he was too slippery to get a hold of. It was tough scenes, but if I could just have the grease,

then we would now know, and BJ's appeal get upheld. We can get that overturned to a no contest. GSPBJ3 are coming to an octagon year you in 2024. Our next category. The Habib Tony Award for the fight that never happened. They always wanted to see. I think there are two very obvious answers. I'm interested to see which side y'all went on,

as I also added two extras just for funzies. I have a very clear choice, but let's start. Nick, let's start with you. What's your top answer for Habib, Tony? I mean, I went very, very chalk here. It's basically one of the, you know, biggest Khabibb-Toney fights there is. It's Anderson Silva. That's the correct answer.

That's the fight that everybody wanted to see. We didn't see it. It's one of Dana White's biggest misses, probably in UFC history. Yeah, I mean, that would have been an amazing fight to see. Counterpound number one versus two, I guess, in their prime at that point in UFC, midway champ, world-way champ. I mean, that would have been the real champ versus champ fight, the real super fight. None of this, you know, Alex Pereira versus Yuri Porhaska.

Well, I guess that wasn't champ for champ, but you get Tom Aspinall. You get the point. I mean. Oh, I know what you mean. Okay. Yeah, Silva GSP. It still kind of sucks. We didn't see it.

It really does. That's the correct answer. A.K., you nodded along. Is this also your number one? Yeah, you have to have it on the list. There's just so much intrigue at the moment. The star power, the fact that we knew. We were watching two legends, two of the best ever to do it.

To this day, again, there's still the top fuels list. That just shows you like... The pain doesn't go away because we're still like, it's not like, oh, well, so many fighters have come along and push them down the pound for pound chart. Now it's like, oh, okay, we would have seen the, like, number 12 and number 13. No, this is like the number one and number three or number two and for however you want to list it.

And the style matchup was so intriguing because we're like, well, clearly, and Silver's quite a bit bigger, but George and Pierre are known for its grappling. Could he have grounded Silva for five rounds? could Silva just beat him up on the feet for five rounds with could Silva knock him out? We haven't seen like George St. Napier get knocked out in a while. It had all the makes of a dream fight

and they just couldn't make it happen. The timing wasn't always perfect, by the way. George Stingbyer had a very good stream of challengers, but there's definitely were windows in there where you feel like they should have gone for it and they should have just rolled out the brink's truck for it. Fortunately, it was not the case. Who would you pick, boys?

Who are you taken in that hypothetical fight at the peak of their powers? I'd go GSP, I think. Of course you would. You're Canadian. Yes. I just think with the grappling, as you said, it's like it's easy way out, easy answer, if you will. But I just think like more of an edge on the ground GSP would have had than Silver would have had on the feet.

You know, generally speaking, it's not some hard rule, but, you know, the grappler beats the striker, or at least just has that base to fall. back on. I would have went GSP, but hey, it's, it's 51.49. Yeah, give me the fat GSP that beat Bissing. I'm picking him to beat Andy. I was always pro-GSP. The older I've gotten, the more of like, maybe I just forever underrated Anderson. I think I would still pick GSP, but Anderson, I mean, what a shame we didn't get that fight. Obviously, the number one. The number two, I think if you're not going to pick this, I suspect, you know, the listeners right now, they didn't choose Anderson Silva because maybe they're newer and they don't realize what they missed there. Number two answer is going to be the Habib Mab McAdol fight, which was teased, was maybe going to be Habib's final fight, the big number 30, GSB is going to come back, they're going to do this, they tried to set it up, never happened.

I wish it had, honestly, it just would have been a sort of cool moment outside of the sphere of the rest of things going on. but it's not a shame that we missed out on it. I would have liked to have it, but we missed something with Anderson Silva. This was just a, that would have been a nice thing to have, you know? I think there's a huge gap between Silva GSP and GSP Khabib.

I'm not saying you didn't say that. But yeah, as you said, Silva, JSP was like a once in a lifetime kind of fight in GSP Kavib. I mean, because GSP was at the very end of his career, as was Khabib, evidently, it was just kind of yeah

if it happened it happens but I'm not loose and seep over that I mean I guess it still could you know AK if Charles Oliver can just bring Habib back one more time yes yes he beats Armin he beats Islam and Kaviv has to come back

as a recording UFC 300 does not yet have a main event so you never know I mean I'm I would bet a lot of things and it's not GSP Habib but I got to tell you if they announced GSP Havib for 300. Buddy, I'm in. I'm in.

I don't care if they haven't fought in years. I'm in. You know it's going to be the fight we all wanted, GSP and Tyrone Woodley. Oh, my God. Why did you do that? Winner gets Jake Paul. Winner gets Jake Paul. Let me tell you another two fights that I would have liked to see from GSP.

One, there's never really a chance that this would happen. There could have been had things played out very differently, but certainly in the back into the career. This is a fight I thought about a lot more. This is Robbie Lawler. Obviously, Lawler was very, very, you know, young Robbie Lawler was sort of supposed to be the next guy, ended up going on a very securedous route, and then come back wins the belt later. Sort of at any point in time, I think I know how the fight would have gone, but I would have just loved to see it, particularly after Lawler beats Johnny Hendricks, who beat George St. Pierre, then there's really some credence to, okay, like, Robbie Lawler really, really,

can win this fight. Even at his sort of advanced age, he's got that sort of savvy that could have given GSP problems. I would have loved to see that fight. And I'm just doing a shout out, an honorable mention. Oscar de La Jolla, you know, GSP tried to box De La Jollaoya for charity, for charity. I want to be clear, he tried to box Oscar De La Jolla for charity. And the UFC was like, no, we don't support children or whatever the charity was for. I was like, you may not do this thing for charity, you may come back and fight in the UFC or you may do nothing. And so George didn't do anything. And that sucks because that would have been a fun spectacle.

And it would have helped the kids, guys. What help the kids? That's all you're, yeah, you're all about that. Well, I love charity, love doing good work, people helping people. That's what it's all about. Next category is we. Like Nick, Nick, you got any? Any other?

There are fights now. I, Laller, yeah. I mean, that's actually one I'd never even thought of, but yeah, GSP Lawler would have been. And actually, GSP Lawler kind of maybe ties into the next category a little bit. I think it will for me as well. But let me say, Ben Asperkin was a fun one to think about, just if only because I think any, any, any, any version of GSP,

probably just annihilates Ben Ascran. Prime GSP, late career, GSP. Like, they could do GSP Ben Askron right now, and JSP still murders them. I mean, I think anyone would murder Ben Asperin right now. I could do GSP Ben Asking in wrestling, and it wouldn't shock me if GSP won that. Well, as the current Ben Asker, he was dealing with some bad hips. But I just, I think there was a little bit of talk about that vaguely.

I think his Ben Asking was undefeated going through LVTRA. There was a time period. But like GSP would have been at least like a minus 600 favorite or something. There was some talk, but that was just one of those. It was like, I don't care about this fight. Like I know he's going to absolutely slaughter him. So who gives a shit about this? And I always wondered how he would have done against Anthony Johnson.

Yes, people, anyone listening out, once upon time, the late Anthony Johnson was a welter weight. Does Rumble make weight? Yeah. So it never really came close to materializing. He never strung together a great win streak. He clearly had issues making the weight class. And we know why, because really he's a 265 or not a 170er. So it wasn't really a thing.

But I think I wrote a long time ago on a blog when I first started blogging, like, oh, here's my five people who could like, beat GSP and like oh I gave odds I gave odds and like but the number one of my list was like anthony Johnson I'm like if this guy strings together a couple of wins he's huge he's got punching power I think he can take GSP out again never came close really he couldn't even beat Josh cause check and I think if he couldn't beat Josh Coscheck that gives us a good idea of how it might have got against GSP so um nothing nothing to miss there but I don't know it would have been a cool visual I have no issue I mean yes I never even thought about that but I will I would have always watched that because

I don't know if Anthony Joshua hits any or not Anthony Joshua obviously Anthony Joshua would be tough Anthony Johnson did anyone they had a good chance of going to sleep

just just ask oh God what the the dude who was on tough the weird Tom Spears just asked Tom Spears who I still think is laying against the cage after Anthony Johnson

brutally assaulted him ugly ugly ugly any I feel any welterweight fighter who stepped to the cage with Andy Johnson when he was like

able to vaguely make weight must have been like what the hell is happening right now like no like this is tough tough scenes what is happening shout out to us two tommy spears references on all right one podcast we're killing it right now next category tj grand alternate universal award if you could change one thing one sliding doors a moment in gsp's career would be honestly don't even have an answer so sort of thought about it for a while i think there's sort of an easy answer you could take. And so I guess if I were going to say one and just be like, what if he didn't leave after the Hendricks?

Like, what if, what have he stuck around? But that just is too alternate of a universe. George was clearly mentally done with the sport at that time. I would not have wanted him to leave or to stay. So I just, I tried to think through. I was like,

there's not a lot of sliding doors moments here. And the reason for that is because when you have a fight, who won a lot more than lost. I mean, yeah, you can say, what if he didn't get knocked out by Sarah? But I mean... But then he came back and avenged it, so it's whatever. It wouldn't have changed a whole lot.

The Hughes fight. The timeline got corrected every time. Exactly. The door slid, and then he slid the door back. Exactly. He's like, oh, no, F that door, close. Thank you. Yeah, so, I mean, my answer on paper was, as you said,

what if he didn't step away after the Hendricks fight? and as I alluded to a minute ago, I kind of just thought about this now, but Robbie Lawler would have been next in line, almost for sure. I mean, he beat Roy McDonald that night in the first fight between them. That was a three-rounder, if you recall, non-title fight, of course. And so, I mean, whether Lawler would have beat that current version of GSP, I mean, it's possible you never know.

That could have been a good fight. But, yeah, so, I mean, it's really hard to say what would have happened if GSP had kept going, but it is interesting to think how things would have been different. And then also kind of on the same note is, imagine if Hendricks got that decision. Imagine if the right man's hand was raised.

You know, how do we talk about GSP all time? I mean, it's going to be very similar. We still talk about BJ Penn as being a top 10, top 15 fighter of all time, and he completely threw away his career at the end of it. So I don't think that would have changed too much, but yeah, I think the BISB thing could have been different. You just never know. And maybe he wouldn't have gone on the four-year hiatus.

Maybe he would have come back and done the rematch and maybe lost even worse. You just never know. Or won like he always does or did. So yeah, those are my two. How do we talk about Hendricks all time if he gets that decision over at GSP? Yeah, because then he probably beats Robbie Lawler. He did beat Robbie Lawler in real life for the vacant title. of GSP left.

So Condit, GSP Loller. Oh, Martin Kampman's in there too. Josh, look at this is a run. John Fitch, Koshek,

Kampman, Condit, GSP, Loller. He would have been... That's an incredible run if you had pulled that off. It's still a good run, I mean,

with the GSP split. He would have been an all-time Walterweight, but he still, I think it would be very difficult to put him in

any sort of conversation for all-time overall just because, I mean, and I don't really need to explain that, but one win over a legend

to argue it would have been oh gsp was way past its rhyme he still was um so yeah it wouldn't have i mean it would have been it would have been huge for hendricks but um yeah it wouldn't have made him the go to anything it's it's not fun i think if gsp sticks around because he probably fights hendricks again and i think he beats him and then he does get the robbie fight at some of robbie gets the gpsp fight at some point i just i think he beats robbie i think just i just don't think robbie has a skill set to beat gpsp and that's not fun i don't want to live in a world where robby luller didn't win the UFC Welchway title for just better because of it.

This is true. And then if Chispe's going to lose the belt to anyone, it's probably Tyron Woodley. I think age-wise, Tyrone maybe catch them at the right time. And that's really not fun to think about. So, yes,

I'm glad this door was never slid open and we don't need to think about it that much more. I will, on the Woodley thing, I will say this little inside baseball for you. I was at UFC 201 when Tyron Woodley wins, knocks out Robbie Luller wins it. I was at U.S.C. 2-O-1 with Ariel Hawani.

And as we were working for him fighting at the time, covering the event, and Ariel texts GSP after Woodley calls him out. And to GSP's credit, he at least pretended like he was interested in that fight. I did not believe it, and obviously that fight did not happen, but he was not like, no, bro. He was like, like, that could be something, like great win from him tonight. I was like, that's pretty sick. That'd be kind of cool if GSP decides to come back for this.

And then he found bigger game to hunt. Better choice, ultimately. But yeah, I think I don't want to live in a world where Tyrone Woodley's the dude who beat GSP. No, no, thank you. Hard pass. That's a terrible word. Like him beating Luller. I still don't feel great about that.

I still hate that. I mean, hate that. There, it's hard to see how things could have worked out better for GSP at the end. he got gifted a decision that he probably shouldn't have earned shouldn't have gotten stepped away you know minimizes the risk of losing again and kind of tarnishing his legacy to some degree and then comes back and beats his thing yeah like you know whether the decision went hendricks's way or jsp kept going it would have somehow been worse for gsp unless as you said aka i mean maybe he would have beat hendricks and luller back back but i kind of doubt it like that jsp that we saw

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Next category, the Left Leg Cemetery Award recently renamed. Previously, this was a quote award because left leg, right leg, hospital. the Left Like Cemetery is one of the best quotes of all time, but Baby Nuts just slightly better. So we have shifted this now to be the category Left Like Cemetery for the best trait like Mirko Crow Cops left high kick. If you get one thing of George St. Pierre's to create a fighter of, build it around, add it to your game, et cetera, what will it be? I struggled here, fellas. I got a couple answers. I don't love any of them, but I struggled to find one that I was really, really happy with. So,

A.K., let's start with you. What did you go with for Left Leg Cemetery? I have a boring answer and I have a sexy answer. Ooh. I have, so I have a boring answer and then I have not no sexy answer. You're doing better than I am. The boring answer is,

my voice just went crazy to it. The boring answer is his work ethic. His work ethic is IQ. I mean, I don't know if there's ever been a smarter, I don't mean just like general intelligence, but smarter when it comes to training, smarter when it comes to strategy, ability to implement that strategy. I don't think there's ever been better.

Maybe Demetrius Johnson, but GSP and him are cut from the same cloth. I don't like that you called this your boring answer, because this is the answer our ultimate choice. It's the best. He's, we talked about him on previous shows. Jersey and Pierre, a great, great athlete, by the, definitely upper tier athlete in MA, but not the most amazing athlete we've ever seen at 170 or in any weight class. Just a very, very good athlete, especially during his time when I think maybe some people

hadn't quite caught up to what it takes to be a professional athlete inmate fighter. But other people came level. We talked about Habibah. Habib, I think, was a far superior athlete. Far fear. And he was great. It's just Kabib was on another level, one of the most athletic fighters you've ever seen. So it's not his athleticism, a mix and special.

It's not his strength, though he was plenty strong. It's that he was willing to, the amount of time he put in. And he's one of those guys. And he had the resources for it early on, thankfully, because he had some success, who specifically didn't just train MMA. He was very famous for I would go to, to this gym, I would drive to this gym, I trained boxing. I drive to this gym, I trained wrestling. I drive to this gym, I trained jiu-jitsu and anything else. He had separate, and then, of course,

there's a camp to put it all together, right, which is, which is key. But he was not just a guy who was like, oh, well, I have my team and I stick with my team, we do our drills. No, he was constantly seeking the best of the best, and picking their brains and then figuring out what works, what doesn't. And I don't know if a lot of people was, John Jones is another guy, I think who has done that, you know, and it's just so if you could find, so if you could put that kind of dedication and also the resources into another fighter, then you can come close probably to matching what GSP did, but it's much, much easier said than done.

Well, I hate that you called this the boring answer. Is this the answer I ultimately chose? And this wasn't the boring answer for me. Everything you said, I just want to add on that. To me, George St. Pierre is the first modern professional fighter. Frank Shamrock is sort of widely considered the first modern MMA fighter as a dude who blended, mixed the martial arts, as it were, or are kind of ushered in this new generation of instead of all specialist guys who are cross-training and can do everything and sort of take advantage of their opponent's weaknesses in whatever discipline they lack.

GSP obviously did that, but to your point, GSP is the first guy who treated this like a professional sport. Matt Hughes famously did not train MMA. He barely trained MMA. He just worked on the farm and, oh, I've got to fight next week. I'll go to the gym and roll for a little bit. and that was it like that was his prep everything you said about George being so analytical

at it um there's a I don't remember what show he was on at some interview video of him talking about the one of the differences between the first BJ fight and the second BJ fight and his approach to MMA and he had a a friend or guy he got hooked up with in Canada

who uh did basically like early analytics research for him and he didn't have that at the first BJ but it was like like, yeah, I've got this guy and he just frame by frame, like watches a fight and does frame by frame breakdowns to determine the speed with which like reaction times for my opponents and for fights and be like, all right, here's the start of their jab, here's how long it takes,

and sort of judging. And then I could go into a fight and kind of have, having never fought them, have some understanding of the way that they fight and what their body is going to look like when it's standing opposite me. I didn't have that in BJ. And the first time I fought BJ was so much fast than I expected. I didn't know how to deal with it. I had to make adjustments and move through,

but the second time I knew. And so we could adjust. And like, I mean, that's the sort of like analytics you see in professional sports, like real professional sports, like basketball and football and football and soccer. Like, it's all about, like, using numbers and math and approaching this in a very professional way and sinking resources in it to maximize your ability. George was absolutely the first fighter to kind of approach the sport in that way. And so to me, that's what I wanted.

Like, he's, he functionally invented being a professional mixed martial artist in the modern conception of it. So that that's where I've taken. So I like that you at least had that, even if it is your boring answer, AK. Nick, what about you? Yeah, I mean, for me, it's the fight IQ, which you guys kind of both touched on it in some capacity. I just think GSP is one of the smartest fighters we've ever seen in the cage.

He always seemed to know what to do, whether it was as basic, is should I go for a take down here, or should I keep this fight standing, or should I, you know, kick this guy in the leg, or should I do this, or should I go for the choke, or should I not go for the choke? Should I lay on Dan Hardy for 25 minutes? Well, sure.

And, I mean, maybe if he went for it, maybe something would have gone wrong, but you just never know. Yeah, GSP was just brilliant. He really was. And so if I'm going on EA UFC 5 and making my own fighter, if I give my guy,

the brains of GSP, the fight IQ of GSP, I'm already got, I already got a leg up on all my competition. So GSP, smartest, one of the smartest guys in the cage we've ever seen. So, yeah, the fight IQ, I mean, you can take almost any tool GSP had, whether it's a work ethic just as striking general, the takedowns, the grappling. You're already doing good, but for me, it's the fight IQ. My boring answer for what it's worth, which I kind of thought would just be the chalk answer. glad none of who you went for it.

I think there's a pretty decent argument. George Champierre is the best of MMA wrestling in history. But that's boring. Lots of dudes can wrestle. You could take the wrestling from any number of guys. It might not be quite as good as GSP, but you're getting close there. Such that I have a sexy answer, A.K.

It probably isn't sexy. Give me the Superman punch. Like, give me that as the, you know, not a lot of dudes throw a Superman punch. GSP went to it all the time. If I'm on EA UFC, that would be one of the special coded punches for GSP for sure. So throw me the Superman punch. But, OK, hit us with the sexy pick.

First of all, let me do GSP coming back at you for your critics, constantly pooping on the Dan Hardy fight. Jed Beshu, you got to understand we look at the numbers on the fight with Dan Hardy. He cannot knock me out from his back. The analytics said that we cannot be too aggressive on the ground or we lose the position. It's pretty good GSP. No, I can't do, but I can't quite do the, his ability to, like, accentuate the syllables of a word so well. It's pretty good, though.

I didn't know we had GSP on here as a surprise, yes. That's pretty cool. Again, if you came up during that era watching the GSP, you were, everyone was doing GSP impressions and it was just hilarious. It's great. We still do it. The sexy pick is specifically his hips. And I'm not just saying GSP has a great ass, though I'm not saying.

his hips are the things he can do with him. This is getting so bad. No, he had deeply strong hips. They're unbelievable, strong, flexible. If you watch, again, one obviously is. His sprawling out cost check is, who. His sprawl, amazing. His double leg, we all know, the last double, fantastic.

His sweeps, I think I can't remember which fight I was watching. I think it was the Pete's Brad fight. He hits this gorgeous sweep, and I just gasped. I was like, that is phenomenal. And it all comes from that lake power. And again, you look at him, you're like, yeah, this is a guy who's solidly built all the way through. Sometimes in combat sports, it's like an upper body business. Some guys just like thick up top.

This dude was thick all the way through. Card from wood. From day one, too. Like he looks identical in his, in his image of our fight. It's just like he maybe added five pounds of muscle, but the exact same from the opening bell of his career. But if I had to take a physical attribute, yeah, the hips are, those hips are, those hips are magic. They allowed him to do many things in there that other fighters would not even, like, they may think of doing, but in practice could not do, and he was able to do incredible

stuff. The thrust behind those Superman punches, Jed, I'm telling you. It's all in the hips. It's, it's all in the hips. The, you know, BJ defended taked downs with his flexibility. Watching GSP sprawl out Josh Koshchak over and over again was deeply, deeply impressed. I was impressed by that performance. Also impressed by his knee tap, man had a killer knee tap. rounding out, and we still have some categories, but these should go fairly quickly. Freshly named category, the BJ Penn Cardio Award for Fighter's Fatal Flaw. If you could change one thing about the fighter's career, what would it be? This was very easy.

I think that there would be a subset of people at a time, as I mentioned earlier, who would say he had a weak chin from the Sarah fight. That was certainly sort of a knock on him. But I always thought that that was overblown kind of bullshit. However, he did have one pretty major flaw that we've sort of touched on on this show. GSP wore damage real bad. Because again, BJ didn't actually hurt him that much in the first fight, but he looked like he went through a threshing machine. Johnny Hendricks hit him with a lot, but he looked beat to shit at the end of that fight. Carlos Condit, the ice image, beat to shit at the end of a fight, he dominated.

You know, Michael Bisping, he was brutally. cut open and kind of jacked up in that fight. He, despite being about as dominance we've ever seen of a fighter, he sure had a way of coming out of fist fights, looking like he lost a fist fight. Yeah, he was no Khabib in that regard. Nope, no.

I mean, that was one of BJ's great advantages over him is you could hit BJ with a bat and he never showed it, but you would touch George and he swelled up and got purple. Yeah. Mine would be, we kind of have touched on it a little bit, but just a bit more, not even knockout power, because he obviously did have power. I mean, he's a 170-pound fighter.

He has the power. We saw that against Bisbing and Hughes and so on. And so on, that's the list, actually? You've named the list. Yes, that is the list, unfortunately. So whatever that it is, that would have led to more highlights and more knockouts on JSB's illustrious resume, whether that's more tenacity, just more power,

overall. Whatever, whatever got him or knockouts, that's what he was missing. He's putting that dog in him. Okay, would you agree? You agree that GSP does not have the dog in him? And that's what you change. If you could change anything? I'm not addressing this. For once, Jed, I went with an actual nitpick, like literally just a nitpick. His backflip could have been better. The celebration, the backflip, sometimes he nailed it. He nailed it like a couple of times, but a lot of it was the, your backflip and it kind of lands on all fours. I just didn't quite land it. The breakdancing wasn't great either.

The break dancing was like, okay, but it was a bit slow. It was like, and I get it. He just did usually came off like a 25-minute fight. I think he stopped doing this stuff later in his career anyway. But the post-fight theatrics, again, this is the definition of a nitpick. You know, just land that back. The first two times he did it, the UFC, because as you watched the fights, I wouldn't have remembered this otherwise.

Joe Roken goes like, I think he heard himself. Like that's how bad. Yeah, it looked bad. And then finally, sometimes he did it, sometimes, but it was never, it was never great. I just thought of this right now. as I was thinking, because one, I did sort of make a note of this. It would just been cooler if he had like a more iconic, like, iconography of a walkout, like a song, a very clear, like zombie.

What, Brett Hart is a Canadian wrestler of some renown. People seem to know him. What did he have like iconic walkout music? Is there like? People love his music. His music to this day, I think is pretty well remembered the. Why didn't GSP just come out of that? I don't know if GSP ever.

embraced pro wrestling style like theatrics or i don't know him to be a pro wrestling fan at all i mean just i just i guess you could come out to oh canada but that doesn't feel like that's that fun you know it's not hyping the crowd up uh so he if he had that uh flawless like the career would just be flawless if there was like oh every time his music hits now you're pumped that would have we could use that as well sure i have i'm very excited about this next category because i have i have have an answer that I'm very, very pumped about. Me too. Brad Ims, fun with stats award.

This is named after Brad Ims, the hillbilly heartthrobbe, former heavyweight on the Ultimate Fighter, AK, I know you love that, who famously at this point, because I've tried to make it famous, won back-to-back fights via go-go plata for a seven-foot-tall man who weighed 260. That's quite funny to me and named a category after him. This is four stats. find a cool, ridiculous, outrageous stat and throw it out here.

Again, I have one I'm very excited about. A.K. has one he's very excited about. Nick, you did not chime in saying you were very excited about this one. And it's also an optional category. Let's start with you. Did you take the option? Do you have a stat here? I didn't jump in because I didn't do the category. Hey, that's fine. It's okay.

Because A.K. and I have you covered with great stats each of us. Maybe it's the same, A.K. maybe we've come to the exact same stat would you like to go first you want me to go first I don't think we have the same stat I think yours is going to be more interesting because mine I just did the typical you kind of glean over a guy's Wikipedia entry

and God bless the contributors to Wikipedia always updating like this guy's fourth and this second versus so I was just trying to see what he was first in and he is first one of the things he's first in yeah many things most top position time and I don't think this would surprise anyone he is currently logged

this corner to UFC.com two hours and 22 minutes of top control. Two hours and 22 minutes. That's 22 minutes more than Damien Maya, who's in second place. So Damien's not going to catch that anytime soon. And then I think the only other active fighters in the top 10 are like Clay Guida, Darren Elkins, and RDA. And Clay Guida is the closest at an hour 48.

So he's like over half an hour behind. And I don't see Clay Guida getting that much top control over people for the rest of his UFC career. So this is kind of an odd record. that I don't think is ever going to be touched. You have to be able to have a lot of five-round fights. You have to, again, be able to have top control for a long time. Like, even a guy like Bo Nicol, again, he'd have to fight something like 10 or 12, five-round fights.

He'd have to not finish people. The not-finishing is another factor. I think Bo-Nickle's going to be a finisher throughout his career. So, yeah, that looks like a record that GSP's going to hold on to. And again, would not surprise people. If you gave them like a multiple-choice list of five things, and this was one of the choices, like, you know, what is he number one in?

Most people, I think, would say, yeah, he'd probably top position. time. Yes, mine is much more fun than that. Though, that is a good stat. Also, at one point in time, GSP, what was the fight who had the most Octagon time of all time?

Forget which fight he passed, but he passed BJ in one of the fights since they've all been passed by, they're like several and they're not sort of in that top 10 anymore. But the one I went with is one that I have tried really hard to verify as true, and I

think it is. Because I've said it kind of at various points in time as part of why I think he has a great case as being the goat 29 straight rounds that he won as a champion so from the fight that he beats mat sarah to become the undisputed champion uh he wins 29 straight rounds either by getting a tkoh in a couple of them or just winning the round. he did not drop a scorecard for like four freaking years, which is categorically insane to be fighting 25-minute fights that long before he finally loses a scorecard to Jake Shields in a deeply, deeply weird fight that he ultimately ends up winning, but he drops a scorecard. His career from Josh Kostek took the first round on him. This was not part of the championship, so it actually gets up to like 34, 35.

if you're just going consecutive fights. Josh Kostchek, he wins the next two rounds after Kosteck wins the first. He blanks Matt Hughes, blanks Matt Sarah, blanks John Fitch, puts a 50-43 on one of the scorecards, blanks BJ Penn, blanks Tiago Alves,

blanks Dan Hardy, blanks Josh Kosteck again. Beats Jake Shields, but ends up losing two rounds and a couple of judges' scorecards. That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight fights where he did not lose a round competing against the very top opposition

in the world. For all the people who think Kamar Usman's quite good, motherfucking didn't do that. For all the people who think Alex Volcanovsky is quite good. Didn't do that. It's just,

it's an outrageous statistical accomplishment from George St. Pierre. So I was very excited about this one. Also, I will shout out, GSP is number three on pay-per-view sales that I can confirm at this point in time behind Cona McGregor and Anderson Silva.

Yeah, and this is amazing again when you consider that his personality back then is the antithesis of what would you consider a drawing personality today. Yep. You know what I mean? Yeah. I do think it's possible. We don't have all the numbers for John Jones. So it's possible John is past him and John probably will if he does return and fight. But based on what I can verify, George is number three on pay-per-view earnings.

Behind Anderson Silva, who had 30 fights or something. Nate Diaz has got to be up there, just given how big. a couple of him. I really not, just because he doesn't have that many pay-per-views that he's on. Right.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because when I first did this, I first did this for Anderson Silva, when I realized Anderson's number two behind Connor, because Anderson has like 27 pay-per-views. He's headlined 20-some-odd paper views. And so there's just a ton.

Connor, obviously, the most. But even after that, like, there's not a lot of people who've headlined more than 10, and Anderson has so many. and generally drew 30 you know three four five hundred thousand and had a couple really big ones that adds up gsp had a ton of very large ones you know i mean he has 13 paper views and several of them

approach a million so he's he's up to he's nine million one hundred and fifty thousand total there's a lot of pay per view buys sold you know it's a ton of action from our guy wrapping up we just got uh three categories left and then we'll get the hell out of here it looks like room for a three-hour episode. Maybe we can tuck it in a little quicker. One of my favorite categories, this is a category A.K. Lee shines in. So Sean Ferris Award for the actor who got a good one. In a movie. This is named after, of course, Sean Ferris, the cinematic masterpiece never backed down. I can't wait for us to talk more about that. But that comes later because now we're doing the award. AK has a good one. I have an okay one and an answer

that I, man, I got pretty mid. Nick, so then let's start with you. Who did you find for Sean Ferris Award? GSP is obviously playing himself. This guy is a viable answer. He is a Hollywood superstar, gentlemen. That might be a bit much. He is the biggest name in all of Marvel, in all of Hollywood.

Can you tell me the name of his character, Nick? George St. Pierre. That's not the name of his character in the Marvel. A.K. is trying to look it up right now. I actually know this. I'm familiar with the character from the comics. I have no idea. His name is Batroc.

Batroc Zalipar. He's a hilarious character. He's a hilarious character. Either way. He is honestly, no one's got to play GSP, ladies and gentlemen. This guy, if it's a biopic, a, MMMA movie, another Kahnemogregor Roadhouse extravaganza, GSP is in there as George MF and St. Pierre, all right? I think that's a fine answer, honestly, because it's one of the two I have, because I do think that it's true.

Are we just using the de-aging technology to play a younger GSP? Are we just going to smooth them out or smooth them out? Honestly, he still looks quite young, so they could probably just make up his ass and make him look there because he's still fit and young. He's not too old to do this. He's got the hair now. A.K., look how young you look with the hair. same thing. Oh, yes.

Natural de-aging. Patrick the Leaper is, that's why I think that maybe he couldn't do it because Marvel just made that character not even a thing. Like, they just did not allow him to do much other than have a flippy Savat-style kick fight with Captain America. And they're like, we're done now.

Whereas I feel like if he was a better actor, they might have let him cook a little bit more. But I do think that's the true answer. If they make a GSP docu series, I do think he's probably just playing himself. Since AK, you feel really good. Let me give you mine, which I don't feel great about, but I feel okay about Aaron Taylor Johnson. Big name can do the physicality stuff. It's not French-Canadian, but I think there's enough of resemblance that I feel okay with it.

But AK, this is where you shine, baby. Show us up. It's not hard, guys. Just use a Google on this. What did you Google for this? Well, first of all, I didn't know. I always try to go away from the de-aging technology, but if we were going to do that, we should just get John Claude Van Dam then to play GSP, and then we just de-aise Jean-Claude Van Dam instead.

I'm not sure John Claude Van Dam can physically do the stuff anymore. He's old. Did you see Robert Deiro in The Irishman, all right? He's as vital playing a 20-year-old version of him. He was as vital as ever. Jean-Claude is 63. He's not doing scenes where he's sitting around at dinner table talking about murder. he would have to be like shooting double legs on the BJ pin actor, you know.

There was an action scene in the Irishman where Robert De Niro has to like kick some guy to it. And it was awful. It was easy to the worst part of that film. I don't know. I don't know why they filmed it. I'll never know. It was easily the worst part of the film.

Did no one see this in the daly's and be like, yeah, we should just take the scene out. Let's edit it out. That was crazy. Anyway, she was going to the old Google machine because I wanted to find a French-Canadian actor besides George St. fear himself. So I found a lovely young man, Antoine Olivier Pillon. You guys can Google this. Antoine, Olivier P-I-L-O-N, handsome fellow. I'm not super familiar with that. I'll be honest, but as I was reading about him, was critically acclaimed for a French-Canadian film called

Mommy. I think it's French-Canadian. It might be normal Canadian. But yes, rave reviews for this movie, which came out some time ago now, but he's still acting. I believe he's doing TV shows. What is this? This looks like And he just fits perfectly. He's 26 years old fluent in French and English. I've heard him speak both. He said before he wants to do his own stunts. There's a nice little

clip out there of him saying, yeah, I wonder more physical stuff. So hey, what's more physical than being an MMA fighter? Sign him up. If this movie gets optioned, Antoine, Lévié Pillon, and your agent, do not let this roll pass you up. I think this is the guy to bring our GSP to life. I can make if you see this.

If he can't do it, thing you call Olivier en bancé. The Canadian gangster. Of course. Of course. And he would love to do it too. He's such a character. He would love to do it.

I feel like OAM would hate and love to do it. He seems like someone who just wants to sit at home and do absolutely nothing. But he would fit it at the same time. And if the paycheck was good, I think he'd be down for it. What would a GSP movie, what span would it? Because I don't think you do his whole life. I don't think you do his whole life. I think you go up to the Matt Serra win?

Right. I think you, I'm assuming that the movie has to either end at Bsping or B.J. Oh, that's, okay, you can't go this far as. I said Metser and then I thought about it, I'm like, your big bad cannot be a pudgy little Italian guy. That is not a great, you can't build that up as you are. It has to either be BJ because it's the biggest fight in history or it's Bisping because it's that but in that in the Bisping story you're not doing the early career

the Bissing story is no the Bisping story starts at Hendricks and is like all right we open into a guy who's battling with the darkness the demons inside and I don't want to do this anymore my heart's not in it wins but

has Dana White cursing him out and saying that he's not retiring he's going to come back and defend his belt because that's what champions do burr-ber-ber and then it will be like a biopic on the years in between and, you know, getting a problem with that. There was just a lot of downtime of GSB doing nothing. Just being a weirdo, yeah. Not that we know, because he's very good at having a private life, but I don't know what he went on in his life.

Oh, sure. Fair enough. Yeah, that, okay. That story is, like I said, it's more a biopic story about, like, the stuff that went on and his personal battling the darkness and all that stuff. and then he comes back triumphantly to return. Yeah. And honestly, I don't need a movie about him, you know, knocking up Matt Hughes and beating BJ Penn to a pole. Like, it'd be great.

Don't get me wrong. Those parts. That's in the run-up. Like, we're just doing a montage, like the pre-credits montage of GSP, just beating the shit out of a bunch of people and holding the belt up a bunch. So it's good. And then the post-credit scene is Sam Alvey knocking out in a karate combat, light-heavy title. about. I mean, sure.

Why not? Why do you do this? Why not? Our next category, it's the penultimate category. It's Cole Conrad career change named after Cole Conrad who's out there selling milk somewhere instead of being the Bellator, I guess, now PFL heavyweight champion. Shouts to you, Cole Conrad.

You made the right decision. It's always the right choice to leave MMA and pursue something different. And that's what this is about. If he was never an MMA fighter, what would George St. Pierre be? I have one answer that I think is the best answer. I have a fun answer that will bring us into a new road. So let's start with my first one. I wonder if y'all went here as well.

Paleontologist. I mean, he's already doing paleontology shows on Discovery slash Amazon Prime. Loves dinosaurs. Honestly, knows a lot about dinosaurs. It's like, he clearly kept up with dinosaurs after being a kid. we all had a dinosaur phase. Like, we're all into them. But at some point, you stop.

But clearly, like, he goes on interviews and we're like, oh, yeah. Like, this is maybe not like a great replica of what a triceratops would actually look like. Like, he's, he loves it. So paleontology, that's my answer. Yeah, I had archaeologists written down, but I mean, same same. Same same thing. One that I just thought of now, that's kind of funny. I don't know why.

I think it's because of the whole alien thing, but he strikes me. He strikes me as an astronaut. Oh. That's interesting. I also had as a joke, a crazy alien person, like Randy Quaid in Independence Day.

I got abducted by aliens, but astronauts certainly a more generous view of that. Yeah. Because he could be like the, because Chris Hadfield famous Canadian astronaut. Jedd, you may or may not be familiar. I know Robert Bondar. I don't know who that is.

Wow. Wow. Step your game up. Come on. But Hadfield retired a number of years ago, and GSP could kind of be the new face of Canadian space exploration. He'd love it. I'm so disappointed in you for not knowing Roberta Bondar. So first

Canadian woman in space? Come on. Yeah, that's my bad. Yeah, he's in great shape. You have to be a good shape for an astronaut. Again, he is, we touched upon this before about, like, his work ethic. He himself has said is because he has, I believe he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Correct.

I'm sure he wouldn't be the first astronaut to have that. Again, to be an astronaut requires an absurd level of dedication, again, not just to physical fitness, but to science and knowing how to be a fucking astronaut. So I think GSP would fit that bill really well. I agree. I'm with you guys. Palantologists, something involving UFOs. I like the specificity of astronaut. I think, I think, um, uh, Nick's on the right track.

And listen, he's a, he's a handsome guy. That's how you want putting, that's the face forward you want representing your space program. You know what I mean? That would get the voters, the people who, who would like have to fund these things going like, yes, this is worth it. This is, we put our money into this. Okay. Let's do it.

If anybody can convince the masses that something that's not worth it is worth it, it's probably GSP. There you go. I mean, he and Roberta Bonda are probably hanging out all the time anyway, just two Canadian grades. Just absolute heroes of the nation. I also put one more here because I just wanted to shout this out because I don't know if people were aware of this, but I'm going motivational speaker for a very specific reason. Do you guys remember the story of GSP meeting his childhood bully? Because I do.

And change the man's life. If you haven't heard it, I think it's. as part of the Rogan interview, and he talks about, you know, he's been pretty open about the reason he started karate was because he got bullied by a child. And on Rogan, he's like, so I met my childhood bully years later. I was driving my car and had a stoplight. And this guy comes up and asks for money. And I look at him and I was like, you used to beat the shit out of me in school. What the hell is going on? I give him my money. And I ask him, like, what's going on? You got to get yourself together, man. And then a few months later, I'm home visiting my folks. And my dad. I'm a dude.

Dad's like, hey, you remember this guy's like, yeah, I saw him, not that long. I was like, yeah. Well, he came to the house the other day. He said he saw you. And then talking with you changed his life. Like he was in a bad spot. Now he's got a job. He's doing better.

Good work. So George St. Pierre out there changing lives of people who bullied him. Not just of strangers or people, people who made his life hell. GSP's out here changing their lives. That man could motivationally speak to me anytime. That's our champion. That's our champion, Jed. Do you see why he's so beloved up here?

Do you see why? I mean, it's not as good as a woman in every kitchen, a gun in every hand, but... Okay. Jesus, gross. Jesus. Shut out, Sean Strickland. I see your thing in the background, your whiteboard. I see Strickland robbed.

Are you a Strickland... Oh, you didn't see the part under. You don't see the part under it. The port under it says, I am a simpleton. It's me making fun of people who believe Sean Sickle and was Rob's. But ladies and gentlemen, we are at the final category before we shut this thing down. It's the, look at me now. Leon Edwards Award for the best moment of the fighter's career.

I flip-flopped, boys. Flip-flopped hard, long, wasn't sure. Not sure this is the right answer. I chose Michael Bisping. I decided. I went with Michael Bisping because of what we talked about when we talked about this fight earlier. I don't think it's his best performance, et cetera, but getting to go out on top, we talked about it a lot in the past few years. There are not very many good MMA retirements, and George St. Pierre is one of them.

He's one of the very few who gone out on top of the sport. A thing he always said he wanted to do at various points, like I don't want to walk away too late. and a thing that he has since said he's pretty happy about having gotten to end his career that way, particularly with sort of the stink of the Hendricks thing, coming back, getting a big win in this way. I think that there are other choices, and there was certainly one other that weighed heavily on my mind, but I went with this because it's one of the best retirements in a May history,

and so I feel like I'm going to give deference to that as the best moment of his career. doesn't seem like either of you went that way. So, AK, did you choose the thing I thought about choosing? No, I mean, my immediate answer would have been BJ, you know, the BJ moment. That was the thing I considered. Yeah. But it was actually a few fights later that I wanted to point out. And also because I knew we weren't really going to get to talk about this somewhere else.

His win over Josh Koshchak, the second fight, the championship fight, really stuck with me. If anyone remembers, this was where he just jabs Josh Kostchuk to death. Just completely jabbed. Everyone was like, if this fight stays standing, broke his orbital. And the whole hype was like, oh, Josh Koshchak's got a big right hand. If this stays on the feet, GSP's done. And Josh Kossack had won a round when they fought a few years back, and people were very high on that.

Yeah. They had coached the ultimate fighter against each other. They go, had to drop that in there and then had this hype up this rematch. and we talked about the thing, the work ethic and also the resources. So GSP trained with Freddie Roach before this fight. And Freddie Roach pretty much just taught him like, here's an effective boxing jab. Not a lot of people in M.A. can do this. Here's how you can implement it to an M.A. fight.

And it was like, it was like, again, to bring up aliens, it was like an alien had fallen into the ring when this fight went on as this fight went on. Because it's like, what is this crazy weapon that GSP is breaking out on Josh Kostick? That Josh Kostchuk can't figure out. It's like, oh, it's just a basic, like, effective. boxing jab that 95% of MMA fighters can't do. And he just did that for five rounds. And then I love that moment because to me it's like, oh, well, this guy's just never going to lose. Like, this guy is his, he has the resources and the time and the dedication and the strategy that no, just no one else can touch right now. He used a basic jab to break, and really hurt him.

Like I said, he broke his ordeal. This was not a fun fight for Josh Koshchek. So that's my moment for me. I'm like, this guy's the best, he's the best ever. And he's only getting better. So I'll go with the Josh Kosh. Wow, wild card pick. Did not see that one coming. No, no. I would have thought BJ would be popular. I have another one that was the one I was strongly, strongly considering.

But Nick, maybe you chose the one I was strong. That one then. What do you got? Yeah, I mean, I think I looked at this question ever so slightly differently. I think when it came to sort of the peak of a fighter's career and in this case, GSP's career, I guess I took the, easy way out and went with a bit of a range in his career in his honor's record and that range was probably in the mat sarah john fitch bj pen wins that is kind of where gsfee was maybe at his best

most dominant obviously you have the the iconic win over bj pen in there you have the the knees of the body to avenge that lost matt sarah in there john fitch was obviously a good win as we talked about if I am going to phrase it differently and say just overall hands down best moment of his career I might have to agree with you. I didn't go Bisbank just because of what that really meant. And I said earlier, was it the most consequential victory? No, because we knew that would probably be it from JSB. He was not going to fight Bobby Knuckles.

That just was not going to happen. but it was as you said one of the most perfect retirements in MMA history it was becoming a champ champ which love it or hate it still means a lot in this game it was beating the bigger man yes it wasn't the Anderson Silva fight but it was still Michael Bisbing it was still for the middleweight title

it was that one thing that had kind of escaped not escape GSP but he hadn't achieved yet all through his career was two belts and he finally did that it was you know one of the better highlights when we talk highlight real and yeah i think it's hard for me to say that was the peak because that was the very end but that is the memory that i mean of course because it was the last one but that's the one that will kind of sit with me forever it's like yeah gsp what a what a freaking career it is weird it's weird for it to be the the peak like you said but

I think the other thing that people probably won't remember as much is it was really meaningful. Maybe not the winning the middleweight belt ultimately isn't, but at the time, immediately after it happened, the conversation was GSB's the goat. People have forgotten. People, we have short memories, they do. And the way, if he ended his career on the Hendricks thing, that would always be a black mark. Even though it's a W, people looked at it differently. But coming back after all that time, a bunch of people were immediately like, oh, yeah, he's the goat. He reestablished himself in that conversation that had been so taken over by John Jones.

And it's, I think it's still pretty valid. So I don't feel bad about choosing it. I think I'm even comfortable with it being the correct choice, at least as far as I go. But I did also give a ton of credence to a fight. We actually haven't really talked much about. We've sort of talked around it, the Nick Diaz fight. So fight before Johnny Hendricks, I think that if you are, if he never fought Johnny Hendricks, I think the conversation of like alternate universe would have been like, whatever he had just quit after Nick Diaz?

Because that was the last guy. Johnny Hendricks was clearly part of a new generation of fighter, not a guy GSP really needed to fight. He was just going to if he stuck around. But Nick Diaz was sort of the last dude in that generation that he needs to get in there with. They had such a history. there was such a big buildup to that fight with the darkness, you know, going to the dark places in his mind. Obviously a terrifically successful pay-per-view. The biggest one of GSP's career, Nick Diaz hugely popular, and another incredibly good performance from GSP. So I think there's a really strong argument that it actually is the D.S. fight.

And then Hendricks is clearly a bit of a low. and then he ends back up on a high mark with Bisping. But no wrong answers in the terrific career of George St. Pierre. And that's it, ladies gentlemen, which means it's time to close up shop. We have talked for two hours and 40-some-odd minutes about this man. But if you haven't said everything you have to say about George St. Pierre, speak now or forever hold your peace. Nick, you're the guest here. Guests can go first.

Let's start with you. What are your final thoughts on George St. Pierre? It's a once in a lifetime kind of athlete. I mean, as we touched on at the very beginning, just what he meant and still means to Canada. Like, I mean, my aunt and my cousin don't give a crap about MMA. And they've met GSP. They went to a book signing somewhere in front of all.

I've never met him. That's cool. I've never met GSP either. Like that, and so that's, I mean, that's a very small sample. It's maybe not the best example, but that's kind of what GSP is. he is despite maybe not being a Terry Foxy is still a Canadian superstar. And then just in MMA specifically, he's still one of the freaking best to ever do it. Smartest fighter ever, most well-rounded fighter ever.

Yeah, maybe didn't have those one-punch chaos that, you know, John Jones and Anderson Silva and whatnot have. But man, just what a talent. And we're never going to get another GSP. for a very long time. I mean, I think in some ways, there's more of a possibility of seeing another GSP

than there is like another John Jones or Anderson Silva, just because again, like Anderson Silva and John Jones had those physical tools that are so rare. But I mean, GSP just had that hard work,

as AK said, and the smarts. And man, he put everything together so freaking well and he did the damn thing. AK, what do you got? I've heard Ariel call,

Leon Edwards, the Tim Duncan of MMA, which is not super inaccurate, but the real Tim Duncan of MMA is George St. Pierre. Just the ultimate winner, not a guy who always had a crowd-pleasing style, universally respected by his peers. I mean, that's without question. Kind of sneaky, funny and engaging, Tim Duncan is that way in the NBA, too. The one big difference is that, of course, George St. Pierre was the biggest star of his era. Tim Duncan can, like as far as popularity, Tim Duncan cannot say the same thing. I mean, that was like Kobe Bryant, Iverson, shack all guys who were more famous than him, even if I don't think they were as good. So it doesn't quite line up exactly because, again, GSP transcended his, again, what one would

think of today, an unmarkable personality to become, again, the biggest draw of his era, at least for a long period time. And then Brock Lesnar came along as well, who was in there. But, you know, it didn't fight as many times. So that's always how I view GSP. And the other thing I have to say is, what a clean lineup of challengers. because I think this is why we put him at the goat list and why we say his career was so fantastic

is everything just always seemed to line up nicely for his list of challengers. The one weird marking there is maybe Dan Hardy. And even then, if you remember at the time, the UFC did a great job of pushing Dan as this notable fighter coming out of England. And then he won the fight. He needed to fight.

He fought Mike Swick. And Mike Swick was considered someone who was one win away from a title shot. So he did the bare minimum to get that teloshot. It wasn't crazy. It wasn't like, wow, this guy's not deserving at all. It was supposed to be Mike Swick. and then Dan Hardy took it.

Dan Hardy beat him. Yeah. So it worked out. And they had, they had, UC had done a good job. He had building him up. So it was fine. It was a sellable fight.

Other than that, you know, he always had a challenge of waiting. When they bought Strike Force, oh man, now Jake Shields is there. Nick Diaz is there. It was so perfectly locked. Even the Johnny Hendricks fight, you guys are right.

It's from another generation. But it was like, ooh, like there's another contender. So he was never short of contenders, never short of guys who were dangerous enough to make you feel like there was a chance to get lost the title. I'm trying to think of guys

that are comfortable, maybe Jose Aldo was probably the next best lineup of title fight opponents. Other than that, again, there's a lot of holes in Anderson's resumes, a lot of holes in DJ. So it requires some luck. It requires some luck to be the goat. But GSP capitalized in every opportunity, and that's why I don't think we'll ever see a championship run like that again. Yeah, so my final thoughts echo a ton of what AK said. I am now sort of milling around the idea of how unmarketingable he was, but ended

up being successful and how that sort of ruined a bunch of MMA discourse about just just doing the GSP thing after fights and be like cool and no one's ever going to give a sure about you but that's not important because what's important is that GSP is an S-tier fighter you know like if you don't want him have him as your goat I think that's fine but he's in the conversation there are a handful of fighters who are that S-tier John Jones GSP Anderson DJ Jose Aldo like that's you know You know, there's a group there of them, and GSB is undeniably it. And for me, I'm going to end where we started, which is he is the goat because of what AK was saying, there is certainly including encompassing the entire career, the outside of the cage stuff, best career ever, just inside the cage.

I know people love John Jones' resume, and I'm not here to say that it is bad. John Jones fought many, the best run of his career, a lot of those dudes are past their prime. A lot of them ended up being middleweights, but a lot of those dudes, Shogun, yes, Shogun was the champion, but anyone who was watching in me at the time knows that that's not the best Shogun we ever saw. Rampage Jackson's, it's all sort of the same there. They weren't at the peak of their powers, whereas GSP fought.

This is the run. Matt Hughes, Matt Sarah, John Fitch, BJ Penn, Tiago L. as Dan Hardy's the weak spot. Josh Kostek, Jake Shields, Carlos Condit, Nick Diaz, Johnny Hendrix, Michael Bisping. Bisping is the worst fighter of that group, and he was a middleweight champion at the time. Like, that is a list of dudes who are all Hall of Famers functionally. It is an unbelievable run that truly may never happen again because to pull it off is out rate.

To be lucky enough to have that run available to, you is extremely difficult. Alexander Volcanovsky has never had that run available just because of the way things broke. He just fought Max a bunch. And that's not his fault. And he won those fights. But he didn't have lists like here's another one.

Here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another one that way GSP did. But then to pull it off, to have that and then to put in the work to get the W's is another thing entirely. And GSP did. And as I said before, he did it without losing a goddamn round. It's not realistic.

John Jones almost lost Alexander Gustafson. Like, it just weird shit happens. And GSP, you know, by good luck, had the weird thing happen immediately with Matt Sarah. And for the rest of his career, the weird thing never happened again because he approached the game differently and minimized it happening. And it maybe means he doesn't have like the greatest highlights. But he's got the greatest goddamn resume I've ever seen.

And I think it'll be a long time until somebody tops it. That's why he's my go. and that is why he is damn good. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for tuning into this episode. Thank you, Alexander Kay Lee. Just my ride or die. Just always here. And thanks to Nick Baldwin, the score showing up in a big way,

reping Canada. You don't know Roberta Bondar. Go learn some young. I don't need to be teaching you about Canada, but that's okay. It has been a terrific episode. Back-to-back episodes. We're going to take a little bit of a break.

here. I'm doing a couple of things. I had a plan for a few weeks from now, but I've decided I don't want to go through with that. And instead, maybe reset. So we'll be back in a few weeks, maybe a couple of changes. Until then, thank you for tuning in. Love you all.