Georges St-Pierre vows to finish fights in UFC return: ‘I’m gonna be more there to hurt guys’

Georges St-Pierre is promising to be an angrier, more violent fighter when he embarks on his UFC comeback.

The former UFC welterweight champion told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that he wants to finish more fights and “hurt” opponents in his second run in MMA. St-Pierre comes back after four years at UFC 217 on Nov. 4, where he’ll challenge for the middleweight title against Michael Bisping.

“I’ve trained a lot of things,” St-Pierre said. “I’m gonna be more there to hurt guys and to go for the finish. To submit, to break. To go for the break. To go for the knockout or go for the break if i have a submission. Until he taps. I’m gonna be more opportunistic.”

St-Pierre, 36, acknowledged that toward the end of his reign as UFC 170-pound champion, he was not necessarily going for finishes all the time. “Rush” said he was “overthinking a little bit too much” and focusing on just doing what he was doing to win rather than trying to get a stoppage.

“If he doesn’t open up, you keep doing what you do well to win the fight,” St-Pierre. “You’re winning, so you don’t necessarily change.”

No longer, GSP said. When he comes back to the UFC, he said he plans on going for the finish, especially in fights in which he senses his opponent has broken. That will be different from the past, he said.

“They were accepting the defeat,” St-Pierre said of previous opponents. “They knew they were going to lose before the end of the fight. They were fighting to not get beat up too much instead of fighting to win.

“On my side, I was fighting to win, but it’s hard. You know that if you’re exposing yourself [to] useless openings, [you can] get beat up.”

GSP (25-2) does not expect Bisping to be someone who breaks and accepting defeat before it happens. The Canadian star believes the Englishman is a worthy adversary and lauded him for his durability.

“It will be tough,” St-Pierre said. “Michael is a very courageous man. He always comes forward. He never backs down. Mentally, he’s very tough.”

But if there are openings, chances to end the fight against Bisping, St-Pierre is adamant that he’ll take them.

“I made my training to be more opportunistic,” GSP said, “to be more angry on the finish.”