During an appearance on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani Georges St-Pierre
announced that he was a free agent: "Right now I’m a free agent. You head it
right, I’m a free agent. My lawyer terminated the contract with the UFC." GSP
revealed that he was making progress on a deal with Lorenzo Fertitta before UFC
was sold but was told by the new owners that the deal was no longer valid. When
informed the offer was no longer in play St-Pierre’s lawyer sent the UFC a legal
deadline to give him a fight. He was offered a fight with Robbie Lawler but
Lawler wasn’t planning on fighting for a while. St-Pierre claims what he asked
for was financially reasonable, but he was told by the UFC before the sale that
they were taking a financial risk by bringing him back and would have to spend a
lot of money reintroducing him to the audience. That didn’t make any sense to
St-Pierre or anyone else. UFC has contradicted GSP and claims he is still under
contract. His lawyer told ESPN otherwise, “Our position is the contract is
terminated. I suppose they could take legal steps against that or they could
offer a new contract. They have a variety of options on their side.” We have
seen this before with Randy Couture who spent $500,000 fighting UFC in court
before giving in and returning to UFC. According to Couture, “At the end of the
day, it still boils down to the same issues. This company has been signing
fighters to coercive and literally awful contracts for years. It’s been one of
the things that I’ve fought with them over since day one, since they bought the
company, over ancillary rights, over right to match and retirement clauses, and
having a little bit of leverage as their heavyweight champion when they bought
the company, we fought over all these things. It’s one of the reasons I’m
persona non grata with the company now.” |