Georges St-Pierre
On Joe Rogan’s MMA Show, Georges St-Pierre’s longtime coach Firas Zahabi revealed that the all-time-great suffered a concussion in sparring before his title fight at UFC 111 in 2010.
“One time he got dropped in practice and I wanted to pull the plug,” Zahabi recalled. “It was for a world title fight, he was fighting Dan Hardy, two weeks before his fight. I was sure he was concussed. And I said ‘Georges, I’m pulling the round’, there was one more round. He said to me, ‘Coach, let me finish the round, I’m okay. Let me finish the next round.’ And I felt that if I pulled him, I would have killed his confidence totally.”
Zahabi reluctantly agreed. He secretly told his sparring partner not to hit GSP again and instead let him win the round. Zahabi ensured the UFC cameras filming that day scrapped the footage of GSP being dropped. And the rest of the camp was spent focusing more on wrestling in order to avoid Hardy’s knockout power due to St-Pierre’s suspected concussion. It paid dividends as he would go on to dominate the fight on the ground and successfully defend his belt.
