The coach of Georges St-Pierre had an interesting tactic to get training partners fired up to train with the former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion.

GSP returned to competition in November after four years away from the sport to win the middleweight title with a submission victory in the third round over Michael Bisping at UFC 217.

However, shortly after the fight, he had to vacate the title as he is dealing with colitis.

The biggest question this year is if GSP will fight again and if that does actually happen, who would the UFC book him against. That question remains to be seen.

GSP’s coach, Firas Zahabi, told longtime UFC commentator Joe Rogan on a recent edition of his MMA show that he used to offer money to St-Pierre’s training partners to go hard at the former UFC champion.

“We reach those high intensity levels periodically through the year, and we have to do it a certain way so that it’s fun. Georges was on your show, and he was saying I was trying to kill him in the practice room. He’s right, but I do it so rarely. I do it so periodically. I make it a joke. I brought the guys in a room, and I was watching them spar with Georges, and they don’t want to touch his face. This is when he was like a mega-star, when he was the champ. Nobody wants to try to double leg him; nobody wants to try to hurt him. They’re like, ‘I’m not going to come here in his house and try to show him.’ There’s a respect thing. They’re starstruck, these young kids.

“I would bring in these young kids, and I would be like, ‘Listen, guys.’ I would give them a speech: ‘The first guy to double leg him, the first guy to put him out, I’ll give a $5,000 reward. If you knock Georges out, I’ll give you 5,000 bucks. If you put Georges on his back, if you take him down, put him on his back, I’ll stop the whole practice and praise you for 20 minutes in front of everybody in the gym.’ And students don’t get praised by me very often. Georges would be like, ‘Oh my God, these guys are coming after me!’ So he would get riled up. I would do this periodically. We’re talking about world title fights, stuff’s on the line. I need these guys to show me where Georges is missing something. Because when you’re having this ‘perfect practice,’ and you win all the time, what do you work on? Nothing went wrong, there’s nothing to fix. So there were times I would really red-light him.”


It turns out that he never had to pay the money but did reflect on one time that the former UFC champion did get rocked.

“He’s been dropped once in practice pretty badly. But the money wasn’t on the line that time. There was no prize for that. One time he got dropped in practice, and I wanted to pull the plug. It was for a world title fight. He was fighting Dan Hardy.”