Ariel Helwani questions the beef between Dana White and Georges St-Pierre

Former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre may be in the toughest fight of his career and it isn’t even taking place in the Octagon.

A battle is currently taking place between St-Pierre and the UFC over contract disputes with St-Pierre and his legal team claiming that they are no longer under contract with the UFC while the promotion claims vice versa.

The return of St-Pierre has been talked about for a long time but not until recently did “Rush” state that he was ready to step back into the Octagon for competition. Despite St-Pierre voicing his want to fight, UFC President Dana White has repeatedly told the media that Georges St-Pierre does not want to fight.

MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani recently spoke about the battle on “Toe-2-Toe with Brian Stann.”

“You know, there are a lot of layers to this GSP story and one thought that keeps coming is, you know Dana White has said in multiple interviews and I know part of that is just promoter talk and whatnot but he has said that he believes GSP doesn’ t want to fight.

“I think GSP has laid it out pretty clearly that he wants to fight and they’re claiming he has a contract and he’s claiming that they’re in breach and the contract has you know been pretty much null and void. So, if they think he doesn’t want to fight and there’s no use for him, why don’t you just let him go? Why don’t you just let him go test the market and let him go get a deal and fight?

“Of course we all know they don’t want him to go sign with Bellator or anyone else because he is a commodity. I think if Bellator signed GSP, I think he can go to the Bell Centre in Montreal, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and fill up that place, sell it out in minutes. He’s that big of a star and I think people, based on how they’re reacting to this story still very much care about him.

“He [St-Pierre] said something interesting, that the new owners told him that they would have to spend a lot of money reintroducing him to the public upon his return and I think that is crazy. I mean he last fought three years ago, wasn’t that not long ago. People still remember who arguably the greatest of all time is.

“Another interesting element to all this is you know, GSP is represented by CAA and now we know the new owners of the UFC is WME-IMG and if you know the history of these agencies, they’ve had a rocky past for many years and I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”

In the end, Helwani stated that he hopes things work out for everyone involved and would like to see Georges St-Pierre continue his career with the UFC.

“Look, I hope it gets resolved. One way or another, I think GSP did a good job of not slamming that door, not burning any bridges, so we’ll see. I think the UFC could use a GSP.”

Hear Helwani talk about the situation in the video below (at 4:26 of the video).

https://youtu.be/JwYHAkWkLIY?t=4m26s