Former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre knows a little bit about losing a fight that everyone expected you to win.
In 2007, Matt Serra, a massive underdog, knocked GSP out in what is still considered the biggest upset in UFC history. So it’s safe to say that the Canadian fighter knows a little bit what it takes to return from a loss like Conor McGregor suffered at UFC 257 against Dustin Poirier and brings a successful return to the boards.
Georges set out his thoughts on the fight and what McGregor should do from here, in a new episode of Michael Bisping’s podcast.
“I thought Conor was going to win, but I was wrong,” St-Pierre said. “I was very surprised. Will he keep his composure under pressure? I think one of Conor’s biggest strengths is that he overwhelms his opponents with his pressure, with his presence. All the information he gives to his opponent’s brain, and all that stuff, a lot of his opponents fold under pressure, but Poirier stayed sharp, and that was a true testament to how good he is. It was breathtaking. ”
Poirier did mention after the victory that McGregor was not a mythical force that entered the second battle, just like in the first battle in 2014.
“I felt his presence less, his aura less,” Poirier said during the UFC 257 press conference after the fight. “I just saw another fighter tonight. I think the first fight, I was a kind of deer in the headlights, you might say. This time I was just fighting another man. Another man who bleeds just like me. And I knew it. ‘
“It will be really interesting to see how Conor gets back out of it,” GSP said. “I believe he can recover from the loss. He is the kind of fighter who boosts confidence. This is how he performs at his best. I think he needs to be born again. He needs to change things in his training and in his life that he believes were the causes for his failure. It does not matter if it is true or not, as long as he believes. ”
“In my case, when I lost to Matt Serra, I trained myself to believe that I lost to Matt Serra because I underestimated him. Maybe I was not scared enough, maybe I did not put too much into the exercise, this is what I tried to force myself to believe. Maybe this is not true, but the most important thing is that he believes in it so that he can build on it. ”
McGregor was already analyzing the fight and what went wrong immediately after his defeat. He is already campaigning for an immediate rematch with the UFC. Did he find out what went wrong? Or is he denying the same kind of error he continues to reveal about his loss of Khabib Nurmagomedov?