Former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre was involved in the UFC Freedom 250 fight-week festivities and made a touching observation of how far the sport of MMA has come. <\/p>\n
Georges St-Pierre has words of high praise for the UFC<\/a> mixed martial arts organization and the sport of MMA as a whole.<\/p>\n “GSP” alluded to the evolution of MMA, going from something that was deemed illegal in many places to becoming a worldwide phenomenon.<\/p>\n The Canadian MMA icon addressed the topics during the UFC Freedom 250 fight-week festivities in the United States of America.<\/p>\n Intriguingly, Aiemann Zahabi, the younger brother of St-Pierre’s longtime coach Firas Zahab<\/a>i, happens to be competing in a pivotal bantamweight matchup against “Sugar” Sean O’Malley at the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n Georges St-Pierre makes touching assertion about UFC Freedom 250 and MMA<\/p>\n In episode No. 7 of the UFC Freedom 250 Embedded: Vlog Series, former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre made a special appearance.<\/p>\n “Rush” was in attendance for the pre-fight press conference earlier this week and appeared to be in awe of the event’s grandiosity.\u00a0<\/p>\n UFC Freedom 250 is a special event put forth by the U.S.-based UFC MMA organization to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence from British colonialism.<\/p>\n It’s been promoted as the first major combat sports event to be held at the White House, which is regarded as one of the most socio-politically revered places in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n For his part, St-Pierre emphasized the incredible evolution of MMA and the monumental achievement of the UFC holding an event at the White House. The retired MMA fighter said:\u00a0<\/p>\n “It’s unique. It’s something that — it happens probably once in a lifetime. I mean, I’m from Canada. The sport, when I first started watching, it was illegal in Canada. Now it’s everywhere in the world. It’s worldwide; at the White House. It’s unbelievable.”\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Watch Georges St-Pierre’s gladdening thoughts on the UFC White House event and MMA below (*comments at the 0:40-minute mark of the video):\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n UFC 83 — Georges St-Pierre headlined the first legally sanctioned UFC event in Canada<\/p>\n A number of fans and experts often cite the UFC 69 headliner between Georges St-Pierre and Matt Serra as one of the biggest upsets in MMA history. Serra stopped “GSP” via first-round TKO to end his welterweight title reign at the event in April 2007.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nevertheless, St-Pierre reclaimed the belt by stopping Serra via second-round TKO in their rematch, a welterweight title unifier that headlined UFC 83 on April 19, 2008.<\/p>\n That event, UFC 83, transpired at the Bell Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada — on St-Pierre’s home turf. It marked the very first legally sanctioned UFC event in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n Well, fast-forward to the here and now — St-Pierre is a UFC Hall of Famer and has been all praise for UFC Freedom 250, reaffirming his love for MMA and its growth around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n Presently, fight fans are just hours away from witnessing the historic event that’ll go down at the White House. It’ll be headlined by Georgian-Spaniard MMA superstar, Ilia Topuria<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The unbeaten Topuria is a former UFC featherweight kingpin and reigning UFC lightweight champion. He’ll fight former BMF champ and reigning interim lightweight titleholder Justin Gaethje<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moreover, the co-main event has former two-division UFC champ Alex Pereira<\/a> and former interim UFC heavyweight champ Ciryl Gane<\/a>. They’ll go up against each other for the interim UFC heavyweight championship, with reigning heavyweight ruler Tom Aspinall still on an eye injury-induced hiatus<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre was involved in the UFC Freedom 250 fight-week festivities and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,3626,3262,9577,45008,638,82,640,252100],"class_list":["post-737099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-georges-st-pierre","tag-ilia-topuria","tag-justin-gaethje","tag-matt-serra","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-freedom-250-topuria-vs-gaethje"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}