Georges St-Pierre doesn’t want to see Kamaru Usman compete for too much longer.
Usman (21-4 MMA, 16-3 UFC), a former five-time defending UFC welterweight champion, is on a quest to regain his title. He managed to snap a three-fight losing skid by defeating rising contender Joaquin Buckley in June.
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Now the 38-year-old is campaigning for a shot at newly crowned champion Islam Makhachev, who reciprocated interest in making the fight happen. St-Pierre retired after claiming the UFC middleweight title in 2017, and urges Usman to do the same if he’s able to get back on top.
“Kamaru, I think, is in his late 30s and I said, man, I’ve been there. I said, ‘Are you going to compete again?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to go for one more stretch,'” St-Pierre said in a live stream with Adin Ross. “I’m like, if you want one of my advice, Kamaru, because I like the guy, I said, ‘Do what you’ve got to do. Get it out of your system. But get out on top.’ That would be the cherry on top and not only it’s better for your health, also for business perspective when you’re an athlete, a fighter and you get out on top, when you get out as champion, yeah of course you have the impression that you left money on the table.
“‘Oh, I should have. I could have done another one, another one’ – and that’s our ego talking. The same thing happened to me. But what happened is, you have a lot of opportunities that present itself to you because your stock is worth a lot of money. So health-wise it’s better, but also business-wise. Yeah, maybe the money will stretch over a few more years, but imagine if you push it to the limit where you end up losing one, two, three fights straight. Now your legacy and that money you will have received from fighting, that block of money, maybe you won’t have it stretch in a long period of time. Those opportunities would not be there if I retired maybe on a three-fight losing streak.”
St-Pierre hung up his gloves on a 13-fight winning streak. During that stretch, the consensus greatest welterweight of all time vacated both his UFC 170-pound and 185-pound titles.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Georges St-Pierre: Kamaru Usman should retire, not risk hurting legacy
