UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre offered his wisdom for how former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion Conor McGregor can bounce back after his knockout loss at UFC 257 to Dustin Poirier.
St-Pierre spoke with ESPN's Ariel Helwani on his show Ariel Helwani's MMA Show recently about a myriad of topics and discussed what he believes McGregor's approach should be going forward if he wants to return to his dominant form.
“When I made my first million, of course, my life has changed,” St-Pierre said (h/t MMAFighting). “I had more security and I didn’t feel that I was fighting for the same reason that I was in the beginning in terms of security. When I was poor in the beginning, I was on the edge. I knew if I lost I would have been dead and my life would be a mess. When you get money, these things change. However, to keep performing, you need to get out of your comfort zone. You cannot stay in your comfort zone during a training camp because you’re trying to recreate the same element that you will face for a fight. When you’re gonna fight, you won’t be in your comfort zone, so it is imperative that Conor if you want to get back on the road of success, he needs to get out of his comfort zone. He needs not to be the boss of his training camp. He needs his coaches to tell him now you’re gonna spar this guy, you’re gonna go there, do this. Even if it doesn’t please him, he needs to go through that. Because if you stay in your comfort zone, the only thing that can happen is you will go down. You need to do that.”
The Canadian MMA legend who is a former two-weight division world champion himself and holds the longest individual title reign in UFC welterweight history at 2,064 days, understands the focus on McGregor in the aftermath of UFC 257 but he also wanted to stress the importance of why Dustin Poirier's performance should not be forgotten.
“We talk about Conor, but let’s talk about also Dustin Poirier,” St-Pierre said. “Poirier did amazing, let’s not take away the performance of Dustin Poirier, it was amazing. He deserved the win. Sometimes we have the tendency when someone is so dominant to only talk about how he didn’t look the same. We see that very often, also with Israel Adesanya and Blachowicz. Blachowicz in that fight, same thing, he surprised me. He showed how good he was. I was not expecting to see, I didn’t know how good he was, same thing with Dustin Poirier, I didn’t know how good he was.”
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