MMA legend and former two-division UFC champion Georges St-Pierre backs Jake Paul’s push for a fighter union. “Rush” recently sat down with MMAFighting to discuss the proposition, pointing out how valuable it could be for young, inexperienced fighters.
In particular, GSP is very conscious that the majority of fighters do not scale the lofty career heights he enjoyed, and need better assurances for their lives post-fighting. “It’s not a question of if it should happen, a union — it’s a question of when it will happen.
GSP Wants Fighter Union
It will happen, because it happened in boxing, it happened in basketball, in hockey, in all professional sports. And mixed martial arts, unfortunately it’s a young sport. It’s still a new sport; not as new as it was 20 years ago, but it’s still relatively young.
Sooner or later, it will happen. And a lot of people have tried to do it before, it failed. But sooner or later, it will happen because the conditions for the fighters, they can be improved by a lot. The salaries, all the assurances after their careers — a lot of guys, they have a lot of issues that are linked to brain damage and stuff like that.
So I feel for a lot of these guys. You only hear about the guys who make it, the Conor McGregor, Khabib [Nurmagomedov], Georges St-Pierre. We made a lot of money, we left the sport healthy and good. But the truth is that most of the guys, 99.9 percent of the guys, it’s a horror movie, it’s a bad ending to their career, ending in a bad way. And I feel for these guys, and sooner or later, there will be a new union that will create kinds of programs to help a lot of the fighters.”
Georges St-Pierre has long championed the cause of a union for MMA fighters. Back in 2016, St-Pierre, alongside several other MMA luminaries including Cain Velasquez and Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, launched the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association. The organization quickly fizzled out, however, as they struggled to recruit fighters to the cause, citing fear of “repercussions” from the UFC as a defining factor.
Since then, however, Jake Paul’s war of words against UFC boss Dana White has been propelled by his calls for better fighter treatment. Anderson Silva agreed to help Jake Paul in his efforts to improve fighter pay and healthcare conditions under UFC contracts, and it seems that in Georges St-Pierre he has found another major supporter.
Is GSP right about this, or is this just another Paul brothers publicity stunt? Let us know in the comments.
