Georges St-Pierre To Be Inducted Into Canada's Sports Hall Of Fame

And there is no athlete more deserving than the pride of Montreal, a fighter who put MMA on the mainstream map in Canada, and then went on to become one of the greatest to ever wear the four-ounce gloves, earning him a place in the UFC Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020.

But St-Pierre’s impact on his sport when far beyond a win-loss record and the numbers attached to his historic career. In a sport plagued by misconceptions and stereotypes, GSP was the perfect ambassador, a gentleman in and out of competition who truly epitomized the martial arts lifestyle he embraced from the first time he stepped into the Kyokushin Karate gym of Jean Couture as a child.

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“We’re in a very rough sport,” St-Pierre told me in 2005. “And a lot of people, especially in my country, don’t consider me to be a real athlete. They look at us as street fighters or brawlers. So it’s important for us to give a good image of the sport and to be gentlemen outside of the Octagon. This way we show the teenagers a good image and we’re role models for these people. It’s important to walk the straight line.”

He did, not because he wanted to make an impression, but because that was in his DNA. But make no mistake about it, though, when it was time to fight, no one could match him when he was on top of his game, and that was because he didn’t train in one discipline, but in all of them, inspired by fellow UFC Hall of Famer Royce Gracie.

How do you top that? By returning from a nearly four-year hiatus in 2017, moving up a weight class, and taking Bisping’s middleweight title.

It was a remarkable career. One that was recognized in his sport, and that is now being recognized by a nation. But if you call Georges St-Pierre the G.O.A.T., expect a (friendly) fight.

“There's a lot of guys for different reasons who could be considered a G.O.A.T., and there are pros and cons, but I truly believe it does not exist, because if you talk about who's the best, I think the best has not even been born yet,” he told me in 2021. “Royce Gracie, as magnificent as he was, he was the number one guy and he achieved things that still today have not been achieved - if you would put him in the cage against the competition today and ask how he would do, he would not do well because the sport has changed. The technology has become better. I remember when I wanted to learn jiu-jitsu, I needed to drive to New York and be in the class to learn an armbar or a choke. Now you can learn it in two minutes watching on the internet by a guy who lives in a different country from you. So the technology makes the performance better. The best example of that is, look at sports where you can measure things. For example, sprinting. Usain Bolt is the fastest man that ever lived that we know of because we have the evidence to prove it. It’s the same thing in all the Olympic sports you can measure. However, you cannot measure fighting because it's one guy against another guy, and there's no instrument of measure that you can have to compare.