Chris Weidman Not Confident Georges St-Pierre Defends the Middleweight Title

There is finally some movement going down in the middleweight division after being in a log jam. Robert Whittaker was able to capture an interim UFC middleweight title. After that, Georges St-Pierre swooped in out of nowhere and became the new champ after submitting Michael Bisping. Meanwhile, fighters like Luke Rockhold and Yoel Romero are waiting to see how everything shakes up. Chris Weidman won’t be joining them at least until sometime next year though, but he doesn’t think the division is unclogged yet.

“You have [Georges St-Pierre] possibly fighting [Robert] Whittaker, but no one really believes that’s going to happen — even though Dana White is swearing up and down about it. There’s just no certainty about who’s going to be champion in the next year in the UFC. Who am I going to be able to take the belt from? I guarantee you it’s not gonna be ‘GSP.’ [St-Pierre’s next opponent will be Tyron Woodley] or if they really sell out, Conor McGregor. [St-Pierre] does find a way to outsmart people. I’ll never underestimate ‘GSP.’ He’s proved time and time again how good he really is and as much as I might think, looking how the other guys in the middleweight division are bigger and stronger and have different things than him, I won’t underestimate ‘GSP.’ He can do it all.”

“My hand is going all right — not great. I’m not really sure how long it’s going to be. I was with the UFC’s physical therapist, and she was hoping maybe in two months I could be 100 percent. There’s no telling. I guess it’s a unique injury. Basically, they took the tendon out of my wrist to anchor my thumb into the socket because the ligament had torn. [The doctor] kind of did tell me, it’s almost the equivalent of doing an ACL on a knee. I’m like, ‘What? What happened to that six-week mark you were talking about?'” — Chris Weidman speaking to ESPN.

Things haven’t gone well lately for Chris Weidman. After losing three in a row to Luke Rockhold, Yoel Romero, and a controversial TKO from Gegard Mousasi, Weidman finally got back in the win column against Kelvin Gastelum. Unfortunately, just as things started to look up, Weidman suffered a pretty gnarly injury to his hand. Once he heals up, it seems like he’ll be able to basically jump right back in line where he left off and get a fight with any person in the top five.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 11/14/2017.