Georges St-Pierre’s Radically Ridiculous Resume of Ranked Fighters

I wanted to do a write up on Georges’ career as it was almost entirely pre Ronda/Conor boom and well before the pandemic boost in popularity as well. He has the most p4p wins and at least as of a few years ago he had the most ranked wins but I suspect that record is gone by now. For those who don’t know, the UFC introduced official rankings in 2013 before all but two of Georges’ fights. So I’ve used fightmatrix rankings to be consistent as well as Sherdog rankings being harder to find after the late 2000s rankings

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Starting at the beginning of his career we’ll pass over known names like Ivan Menjivar & Jay Hieron because they hadn’t established their careers yet. But still worth noting Georges’ first professional fight was against someone who would be competing in the UFC still over a decade later

Georges would begin his UFC career two years after debuting in MMA and debuted against the #12 ranked welterweight in the world Karo Parisyan. Shortly after the decision win and a quick finish of earlier mentioned Hieron, he’d be matched up with the #4 p4p fighter in the world and reigning UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes and the fight was competitive but Hughes sunk an armbar in with just a second left in the first round and handed Georges his first loss in his career

Georges’ UFC career would restart with three straight wins over the #9 ranked Jason Miller, #6 ranked Frank Trigg & # 5 ranked Sean Sherk. After the Sherk win at UFC 56 he dropped to his knees and begged for a title shot rematch with Hughes. This was unsuccessful and instead Georges would be given an extremely tough test to fight the ranked #6 p4p & #2 welterweight in the world, BJ Penn. This would end up being a very close fight that could’ve had a winner decided by a coin flip. The judges leaned towards GSP via split decision and he would go forward to rematch Matt Hughes

The Matt Hughes rematch would be very different from their fight two years earlier. Georges looked in control and eventually caught him with a clean landing head kick. Georges was now officially a UFC Champion, just like he wanted. His first defence would come against the winner of “The Ultimate Fighter 4: The Comeback”. A tournament of rejected welterweight & middleweight UFC fighters with the winners being given instant title shots. Anderson Silva had already destroyed the middleweight winner Travis Lutter a few months before and no one had any expectations for the welterweight winner, Matt Serra. Luckily for Matt Serra none of that matters in the cage. Quickly in the first round Matt Serra tags Georges St-Pierre and rocks him. Georges tries to fight back even harder and gets TKO’d and humbled quickly. #23 ranked welterweight Matt Serra is now the first person to TKO GSP and gives him the last official loss of his career in what is considered by most to still be the biggest upset in MMA history

GSP gets thrown against TuF 1 alumni & #3 ranked welterweight Josh Koscheck a few months later to bounce back. He out wrestles the wrestler to the surprise of many and completely controls the fight. Matt Serra & Matt Hughes were having a Matt-off for the ultimate fighter and supposed to fight for the championship at the end of the season. However Serra hurts his back and Georges gets to step in for a trilogy fight against #2 ranked Matt Hughes for an interim belt. The third fight is definitive with Georges coming out on top after showing Matt Hughes the armbar he’d caught him with a few years earlier

Georges now gets to fight to avenge his loss against #9 p4p champion Matt Serra. This fight goes along the way most were expecting the first to. Georges controls the fight and knees a balled up Serra for the finish and regains his belt. Now kicking off a legendary run in the UFC

Jon Fitch is one of all-time the best fighters to never hold a championship. He was ranked #14 p4p at the time of his title challenge but would later be a staple on p4p lists going as high #5 and hanging there for years. Hated by Dana White for his boring style he’d be very controversially cut about half a decade later despite being a top talent. But well before that he’d have a fight with Georges St-Pierre. The night of UFC 87 Georges would beat him handedly scoring 50-43 or 50-44 on all the judges scorecards. The unstoppable fighter people thought Georges was gonna be before the Serra loss had come back and was here to stay

One of the biggest super fights of all time would come next. BJ Penn had gone back to lightweight after his welterweight campaign and looked incredible. And in the middle of stacking up three consecutive lightweight championship defences (a record that still hasn’t been broken) he’d get to rematch Georges St-Pierre. A fight that was a coin flip before was now a beat down. Georges beat the brakes off the #7 p4p fighter in the world and BJ Penn wouldn’t answer the call to the 5th round earing Georges a definitive victory over BJ Penn to really put him in with the other elite p4p fighters that no one argued against. SIKE! Between the 1st and 2nd rounds Georges had a cornerman rubbing vaseline on him but not just his face. While doing breathing exercises the cornerman started to rub his chest and back. This would become known as “grease gate”. BJ Penn was furious and tried to get the fight overturned but failed. This also led to cornermen no longer working with cuts and instead we’d get third party cut men

Next Georges would have a fight against the top welterweight contender & #8 p4p Thiago Alves. After a highlight KO of Matt Hughes a year earlier Alves was given a top contender fight against Koscheck, the winner would wait for the winner of Penn/St-Pierre. This fight took place at UFC 100, watched by the most eyes ever at that point. Georges dominated the fight but no one would be talking about that because Hendo murdered Bisping that night and Brock Lesnar avenged his Mir loss. Despite this Alves would remain on p4p lists for almost a year until he’d get dominated again by Jon Fitch, I don’t know why I can’t remember people being that high on Alves for so long

Next Georges would have some of his “safest” fights in his career. A title defence against #5 ranked Dan Hardy, the first title fight a British fighter would ever get, who was being seriously overlooked. And the fight went as many expected, Georges absolutely dominated him again earing a 50-43 scorecard. What was taken away from this though was Dan Hardy surviving both an armbar & kimura that were completely locked in. Giving Dan Hardy a much tougher reputation and starting a conversation about Georges not getting finishes in his fights anymore. Georges would then fight #2 ranked Josh Koscheck who had rebranded himself from a wrestler to a striker with knockout power. This fight is well known but not very exciting. Georges jabs him in the face for 5 rounds, Koscheck has no answer whatsoever and his eye looks awful by the end of the fight, the two guys just on different levels at this point of their careers

Arguably the toughest test in Georges career would come at UFC 129 against Jake Shields. Giving us one of the all-time UFC promos even if it does come across as so cheesy/dated now. Jake Shields is an all-time welterweight. He had been hanging around on p4p lists for a while but now strikeforce was bought by the UFC and the 15 win streak, #8 p4p fighter & former strikeforce middleweight champion was going to fight GSP. Extremely boring fight where Georges won 48-47, 48-47 & 50-45. Weird fight, it wasn’t really close despite two judges only making it a single round difference, lots of eye raking from Shields which people would then blame for Georges’ lack of action. People just cared that Georges won, then this fight was basically thrown away from peoples memories and I can’t say I blame them

Georges would now tear his ACL and take him out of commission. This was back when interim titles were rare and really did hold value, far from todays. In his absence the former strikeforce welterweight champion and 11 fight win streak Nick Diaz (who had just pieced up BJ Penn) was going to fight former WEC champion Carlos Condit who was 13-1 in his last 14. This fight would be very close and Carlos Condit was given the victory unanimously by the judges. Georges would come back over a year away from fighting to unify the belts with the #10 p4p fighter Carlos Condit. He’d win the fight with not much significance happening outside of the third round where Condit landed a great head kick and dropped Georges. GSP would cover up and regain composure before taking control of the fight again. He’d later credit learning from his mistakes of trying to hurt Serra as soon as Serra hurt him as the reason he didn’t lose to Condit here

DIAZ 1 2 5 cough excuse me. Because the interim title fight was very close and because Nick Diaz was an extremely popular fan favourite (his little brother could only dream about having that many fans amirite?) Nick was given a title shot coming off a loss (I believe this was the first time this happened in the UFC and it was very controversial at the time to say the least). This fight was not competitive and Diaz lost every round handedly being unable to stop a takedown to save his life and Georges was pretty well known for not letting anyone get back to their feet

Late in 2013 after a few talks about retirement Georges would fight the hottest prospect in the division. #10 p4p ranked Johny “Bigg Rigg” Hendricks. Hendricks had just beaten Carlos Condit in a fantastic title eliminator. A good chunk of fans thought Condit should’ve won but no media had it for him and while he did damage, it’s always hard to win a round off your back. Hendricks had gained notoriety prior to this flatlined Jon Fitch who was coming off a draw with other p4p fighter BJ Penn (Dana hated the fight and ignored the title eliminator part ,think Jan vs Magomed for the heavyweight belt earlier this year). Anyways fans were skeptical of Johny after he had a very close fights with Koscheck & Condit who Georges had previously disposed with relative ease, others thought he was a great wrestler with power who could end Georges reign. This was a very hyped title fight. The fight can be broken down like this. Georges wins rounds 3 & 5 clearly. Hendricks beats the shit out of Georges rounds 2 & 4. The first round was very close, but it should’ve been Hendricks’. I know now fans always talk about how it could’ve been Georges but almost no media scored it for him live and watch that first round and tell me how Georges wins it despite it being a close round where Hendricks gets a takedown as the difference maker. Georges wins a bad decision. I don’t like saying robbery because it was 48-47 no matter what and a one round difference fight shouldn’t be called a robbery. But it’s the wrong decision still and this should’ve been Georges final loss and first decision loss. Either way in the cage Georges would say he’s taking time off, not committing to a retirement but kind of announcing he’s retiring at the same time. Dana White was furious and more red than the ripest tomato because of this

But now we don’t care, it’s 4 years later and Bisping had upset Luke Rockhold in a rematch no one thought he’d win. Bisping has a mediocre (at best) defence against long time rival Dan Henderson to avenge his horrific KO loss at UFC 100 and then out of retirement came Georges St-Pierre. Finally moving up to challenge the middleweight champion just like people had been asking for years. Well not just like that since he was fighting a one eyed guy even older than him but whatever. Georges looked like he hadn’t been out of fighting for 4 years as he took the first, arguably two first rounds, and then tagged the #8 p4p Bisping in the third dropping him and getting on top for a RNC. Getting his first real finish in almost a decade and putting an excellent cap on his career

I know it’s a lot of reading but hopefully someone out there learns something new about an all-time athlete in the sport who won 10/11 of his fights against fellow pound for pound top ranked fighters