Georges St-Pierre recently made an appearance on an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast and discussed a number of things over his time with the host, including his opinions on the best martial arts for fighting in the street and how he would’ve approached the unsolvable puzzle of Khabib Nurmagomedov. Of course the former UFC Welterweight and Middleweight World Champion is confident that he would’ve been able to be the first person to defeat Khabib, but he actually goes into detail on how he thinks it could’ve been done, had UFC brass ever matched them up together:
“Well, Khabib is very good against the fence. I would have to establish a game plan and everything, but I think what I would (have) needed to do is take the center of the Octagon right away, use a lot of feints and fakes, keep the fight all the way out or all the way in. And when I say ‘all the way in’ is when he close the gap, use my proactive and reactive takedowns and perhaps use my (explosiveness) to put him down. I like to use those proactive and reactive takedowns because, for me, I feel it’s more economical. Khabib is a much better chain wrestler than me.”
“Khabib has more a style of chain wrestling like Kamaru Usman. It’s a different style. You cannot compare both styles. And that’s the kind of takedown I’m good (at). If I were to fight Khabib, that’s one of the strategies I would have adopted. I would not have been afraid. Because everybody that I fought I was able to put them down. And I have the pedigree to prove it in my fight résumé. So you would perhaps see him on his back, and I would perhaps be on my back as well, so it would have been a very interesting fight.”
“I would not have been afraid of his wrestling. I would have instigated. I would have forced the fight forward. And that’s how I would have approached that fight, which I believe most of his opponents were afraid of his wrestling because they didn’t have the tools that I have to put him down. In the clinch, I would have tried to disengage. I have many ways to disengage a clinch. I would have wanted to force the fight in a fighting distance, in a shoot-box distance, not in a wrestling distance.”
The excerpt from the episode of the Lex Fridman podcast featuring Georges St-Pierre where he discusses his approach to fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov can be found below, or click here for the full podcast.
