Wasted prime for GSP.

Georges St-Pierre is the fighter that I credit for doing the most in making me a fan of MMA. I don't remember exactly how it started, but somehow I ended up watching a load of his fights, then deciding that MMA might just be my new favourite sport. Imagine my surprise once I did a bit more research and found out that he wasn't the only fantastic athlete involved with the sport, and that there were fighters who captured my attention just as much as GSP did.

Now that I am a full fledged fan of MMA I don't get the chance to see GSP fight that often, simply because he doesn't. Since he beat Matt Serra for the Undisputed UFC Welterweight Championship in April 2008 he has fought and defended the title six times. A huge pay-per-view draw, GSP fights always have a huge build up, especially in the cases of his past few fights, where it is a constant question of who can break his current nine fight win streak. With news that an injury is going to have GSP sidelined for roughly nine months just out, there is a contest between Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit being held at UFC 143 in February. This news hit me hard, as it seems like so long since I have last seen GSP fight. His last bout was in April this year, when he beat top contender Jake Shields by unanimous decision.

With this latest injury, he will only have fought once in 2011, and might only fight once in 2012 depending on how his surgery goes. This bothers me because though GSP always goes on about MMA being his whole life and who he is, he just seems to barely ever step in the Octagon. Jon Jones is the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, and his upcoming fight against Lyoto Machida will be his fourth fight in 2011. At 24 years of age, Jones is building up his MMA legend at an early age, so that it will be well established by the time he slows down with age. While deciding who fights how often could just be completely down to the booking of the UFC, at only 30 years old it seems like GSP is wasting the prime of his career sitting on the sidelines. I do not even think he would be injured if he had just been competing more. Fighters often seem to injure themselves in training camps before fights, and it seems to happen more often when they have not fought for a while and over do it in training.

GSP claims he wants to be remembered as the greatest welterweight in UFC history, and it seems like he should be fighting ever chance he gets, while he is still young in order to achieve this.Still one of my favourite fighters, I will be writing about GSP again in future, but for now, let's just hope that GSP is wishing that he had fought more when he had the chance, and that he comes back more motivated and ready to fight on a full schedule than ever.