LAS VEGAS — Georges St-Pierre is happy.
That's the first thing you notice about him here, at Robert Drysdale's gym on Rainbow Avenue. St-Pierre is happy. He is smiling. It may seem weird to say that he is glowing, but there you have it. He glows.
He is here today to help one of his sponsors, Hayabusa, launch its new official fight glove for the kickboxing promotion Glory. He laces up the new gloves and goes through a workout session with the kickboxing champion Nieky Holzken and his coach. He smiles a lot, mostly because he's doing this for fun and not because he has to. That weight, the one that pressed him down and made training and fighting far less fun than it was before he became rich and famous, is now gone.
Things are good for St-Pierre these days. He is wealthy and never really needs to return to the sport that made him famous if he doesn't want to. The UFC has undergone a sea change since he left a year-and-a-half ago; there have been two new welterweight champions atop the division he once ruled with an iron glove.
St-Pierre left for a bunch of reasons, but one of the major ones centered on his belief that the UFC had a drug problem. According to St-Pierre, he began expressing his dissatisfaction with the UFC's problem with performance-enhancing drugs many years ago, long before he made the decision to walk away.
His pleas fell upon deaf ears.
"Ask everybody in the UFC who knows me," St-Pierre said on Wednesday. "I said it for many years. They'd say 'Really? Are you sure about that?' And I said, 'Yeah, I'm f-----g sure about that.' I was very angry, and nothing happened. I said it for a very, very long time."
St-Pierre said that he has intently observed the UFC's drastic changes, from the Reebok uniform deal to the addition of a random drug-testing program by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. On the drug-testing front, he says that people are able to speak a good game, and that good promises have been made, but he is waiting to see how things are actually executed.
He won't speak much on the Reebok deal—he said it would be a problem for him because he represents Under Armour—but said that there would be much work to do between his management and the UFC on that issue should he ever decide to return.
St-Pierre's status as one of the greatest fighters in history and the wealth he stockpiled from the moment his career began afford him a rare place among fighters: He can say what he wants and doesn't fret about the consequences.
"A few years ago, I didn't make as much money. And it was easy for people there to say, 'Oh yeah? You're talking bad about us? You're out.' There are a lot of guys in the same situation," he said. "They think the same things as me, but they do not have the power that I have. I don't need to fight anymore. If I don't want to fight, I am wealthy, I am happy. I don't need this anymore. Maybe I would like to, but I don't need to."
The recent firing of beloved cutman Jacob "Stitch" Duran highlighted St-Pierre's point. The Reebok deal is here to stay, and if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you on the way out. And maybe that's why you don't hear fighters really speaking out about the giant pay cuts they've suffered as a result of the deal or about how sponsorship money—once a brilliant way to make a decent living outside the cage for these guys—has been completely evaporated both by the Reebok deal itself and by the sponsorship tax put in place a few years ago.
But none of that affects St-Pierre. He has Under Armour, Hayabusa and other sponsors who have stood by him, because the GSP brand, even in retirement, is a good brand to be associated with. So he's speaking up for other fighters, the ones who can't say what's on their mind or complain because they're afraid of losing their jobs.
"This is a very hard life. These guys don't make a lot of money, and they have to keep their mouth shut. If you open them and say what you think...you see what happened in the Reebok thing. If you talk bad about certain things, you're kicked out," St-Pierre said. "Some of these guys need the income. I understand that. And I'm no different than them.
"But now I'm in a position where I can say what I think. I'm not being disrespectful, but I am talking for a lot of people that trust me."
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report.
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