Luke Rockhold recently outlined his desire for a match with Georges St-Pierre, now that his fellow UFC legend has decided to return to professional grappling competition. Despite the fact that St-Pierre has been retired from all forms of combat sports for around 6 years, he recently announced that he was going to take a grappling match at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 6 at the end of 2023. As one of the greatest MMA fighters in the history of the sport, St-Pierre had no shortage of potential opponents to choose from. The UFC gave him a long list of competitors they thought he might be interested in facing, and he’s since made his choice.
Out of all of the dozens of elite grapplers and MMA fighters who were willing to step onto the mats against him, it was Demian Maia who was eventually booked to compete against St-Pierre. Despite the fact that Georges St-Pierre already has his opponent, Luke Rockhold would still gladly step in:
“Georges St-Pierre wants to go, I would go with Georges in a heartbeat. But, if he’s smart, probably not. I’m too big and too good for him.”
It’s true that Luke Rockhold historically fought at a higher weight class than Georges St-Pierre during their respective MMA careers, as he was either a middleweight or a light-heavyweight at different points. St-Pierre on the other hand was a welterweight fighter for almost his entire career, only moving up to middleweight for his famous comeback fight against Michael Bisping. Naturally Rockhold can only drop so low in weight, and he has a hard limit on how far he’s willing to go to meet him:
“I’m not going down below 185 pounds. Grappling, I wouldn’t go below 190. If Georges wants to go I will meet him 190 pounds any day of the week. I’d love to do it.”
It’s not impossible for the two men to meet of course, even if that match might take place after St-Pierre’s return at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 6. Although that’s the only match he has had confirmed so far, it’s not impossible to imagine that St-Pierre chooses to take a handful of grappling matches over the coming years. St-Pierre has competed at a high level before at ADCC 2005 and Rockhold has competed at Polaris in the past too. With Rockhold being interested in the matchup with St-Pierre, there’s a fair few grappling promotions that would happily book that epic battle for a future event.
The full interview with Luke Rockhold where he outlines his desire to have a grappling match with Georges St-Pierre was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAJunkie: