The Way of the Fight

by Georges St. Pierre

  This is important because, as I enter tougher competitions against better opponents, I need my brain to focus on something other than performing movements. I need my mental focus to remain on strategy and decision-making, not technique and execution. Those must come naturally, because in a fight, there’s no time to think about how to punch. There’s barely enough time just to let the body do what the mind thinks is best.

  MASTER: The public perception of Georges is that of a mixed martial artist, certainly, but he sees himself as a martial artist, which is how I see him too. To differentiate, you must delve into a theory of what is mixed martial arts.

  People use the term martial artist in an extremely loose fashion. The very idea of what is a martial artist has changed dramatically in the last fifteen years, with the advent of MMA. Many aspects of modern martial arts were not considered martial arts when I was a child. Wrestling, for example. Now, only a fool would deny that wrestling is a martial art. MMA, meanwhile, is a composite sport; it’s a collection of other sports wedded together to form its basis. It’s built out of freestyle wrestling, judo, karate, boxing, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, sambo and various other combat sports. The only common feature of the various martial arts that form the basis of MMA is that they are all competitive sports. This is unlike the more eclectic styles of kung fu, for example, which have no sporting aspect, no competition of any kind.

  And yet, MMA is something more than the sports that form its basis. The complex relationship between those component sports and the overall sport of MMA is a difficult one to describe. That’s why mixed martial arts has always been a poorly understood phenomenon. I would go so far as saying that many of the athletes in the sport have a shallow understanding of the sport.

  Before each one of my fights, I make a point of saluting my opponent. I salute the other fighter out of respect, even though he is trying to take something away from me. Not many people understand why I do this, but it’s simple: without the other guy, there is no me. That’s why I pray for the both of us, and not just myself. By stepping into the octagon, my adversary completes me. He makes my life possible. He becomes a part of my existence. To disrespect him is to disrespect myself. Thanks to him, I become a better man. Thanks to his presence, I am a true martial artist. Thanks to his willingness to face me, my life takes shape and moves forward, my path evolves and my life goal nears.

  During the fight, my job is to win by fighting as little as possible. The greatest victories are those you don’t even have to fight for. You just aim to reach the point when you can feel victory within your grasp. When do you know you’ve got the other guy beat? When he breaks down mentally. It’s never truly over until it’s over, but there is a breaking point when you know you’ve got him. When he is close to capitulation. When the end is near.

  The reality and the danger, though, is that this is a dangerous time, perhaps the most dangerous for the fighter in the lead, in control. Because when your opponent is on his last hope, it means he’s capable of trying anything. He’s a desperate animal who will attack. He’s a broken warrior whose last ounces of effort will be bunched into a final desperate lunge for a prayer, a flicker of hope, a miracle punch or kick.

  But it’s the last attack, usually.

  Each fighter has a different “tell” for when he has broken down mentally. I’ve noticed that one great opponent of mine accepts dominance from his opponent when he leans against the cage to rest and, hopefully, regroup. I’ve observed another wiping the sweat from his brow with each hand, like a nervous tic. Many pull and grab at their own shorts repeatedly. Others just move differently and have a wild, foreign look in their eyes. It’s always unique. It’s often bizarre. And it can only be final.

  Once it becomes final and the fight is ended, I bow to my opponent in praise and thanks. After the fight is a time for humility, acceptance and analysis, no matter the result. Sports are reality television, the best of it, but the “actors” are real people, real human beings who are walking the paths of their own lives. We can never forget that. Before the fight, you and your opponent are on opposing life paths. If he wins, he wakes up tomorrow and his entire existence has changed dramatically. When you’re the champion, if you win, the next day is the same as it was yesterday. If you lose, your life has changed dramatically. This understanding extends to all things.

  In one of my earliest fights, right after winning, it occurred to me to go see my fallen opponent, Justin Bruckmann, to make sure he was all right and congratulate him on his performance. He truly deserved it. After beating Pete Spratt, Pete and I went out on the town. After the referee’s controversial decision against Ivan Menjivar, I took the mic and told the crowd that, despite the ruling, my opponent had not tapped out. I said that he wanted to keep going, and that we could keep fighting. They of course gave me the win, anyway, but I still consider that fight a draw. I was a long way from championship-caliber anything, but the truth comes out naturally when you live in balance. Human beings have a natural attraction to the truth, but winning can obscure the truth. One needs to remind oneself in victory and defeat.

  After my fight against Koscheck, where I was painted the hero and he the villain, I felt compelled to quiet the crowd, telling everyone his prefight smack talk was just hype, just a way of getting fans involved. While it’s important to build hype and get people excited about a fight, I know that bragging and threatening my opponent with destruction just doesn’t fit my style. I come from the world of traditional martial arts, and that’s something you just don’t do. I know a lot of people would like me to say more, or do more before each fight, but I know myself, and I know what is (or seems) authentic and what is not. What I also know, though, is that prefight banter is good for some fighters—it helps them get ready, get psyched up. And some mixed martial arts fans love the controversy. The truth is, I kind of enjoy it myself when I’m not at the center of it. But when I am, it has served to motivate me.

  But then there is a time to let go. There is a moment when you look at your opponent, and you must see yourself. Only then will you understand the words of one of my favorite quotes, which comes from St. Augustine: “Conquer yourself, and the world lies at your feet.”

  MASTER: Georges had a very interesting sensei in his early years: Kristof Midoux. As a teenager, this sensei would literally make Georges fight grown men in all-out challenge matches. Georges, who had a very limited repertoire of grappling techniques, only knew a sloppy double-leg takedown and had his karate movement skills. And from those humble beginnings he was pushed into fights with grown men that could be wrestlers, boxers, karate specialists, et cetera. Georges would literally have to fight these men to the ground and, with his limited Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills, submit them. He had to shootbox them.

  I believe that if GSP had not met Kristof Midoux, he would not be the international success he is today. People often wrongly speculate on Georges’s greatest influences, but I can tell you Kristof is one of the seminal favorites. Sometimes, from the craziest people comes a surprising wisdom.

  There are moments during some fights when my mind wanders away from the octagon. Sometimes I’ve looked over at Dana White or Lorenzo Fertitta, the UFC bosses, and tried to read the expressions on their faces, tried to understand what’s going through their minds. I remember very clearly looking out of the octagon once and locking eyes with Tito Ortiz.

  I like Tito; he’s a special kind of hero for me. It’s because of martial artists like Tito, who paved the way for fighters like me, that mixed martial arts has come so far in our society. He’s an old hand at MMA, the real deal of a man. Guys from Tito’s generation made almost no money, had it tougher than anyone can imagine, and persevered for one reason: because they loved what they were doing. I admire those men. I understand their passion and I try to be respectful of it.

  While I was holding an opponent against the fence, Tito and I looked at one another and I made a face at him, trying to express a thought—that what I was doing was going to
be long and hard and tough. And he responded, just with his eyes and a slight movement of his head, like he was inside my thoughts and saying matter-of-factly, “Yeah, that’s right. It’s tough. Just get it done.” I believed at that moment he really was inside my head because he’d been there before, in the ring. He had lived what I was living. He knew that in the octagon, nobody will fight for you. Nobody else will enter and do your job. When you’re inside the octagon, the rest of the world is a distant place, without reach. There’s you and there’s your job, and over there is your opponent. Your job is to fight him and win.

  MASTER: In the early years, like any beginning student, Georges had some rough experiences. He was hit repeatedly. But as the mounting years went by, on an intuitive level, he started to integrate his karate movement patterns with the wrestling he was learning and the boxing he was beginning to pick up. As he embarked on his MMA career, you could already see the beginning elements of something truly great. His ability to cover distance, misrepresent his real intentions to his opponent and intimidate them with these great takedowns was interspersed with the threat of strikes. His ability to create his own rhythm while thwarting that of his opponent was there from those early days and, over time, was refined. In my personal opinion, it hit its apex the night Georges fought Josh Koscheck for the second time. I’ve watched him for well over a decade, doing his shootbox entry drills, and that night his shots were so fast I couldn’t even see them coming. To his credit, Koscheck did a good job of getting back up. But the actual entries to the takedowns were as good as any human being will ever achieve. As a coach, that was one of the few times of my life that I looked upon a student in wonder.

  I rely on the power of the unexpected to defeat my opponent. The best example may be my takedown technique.

  The secret is not in the how, it’s in the when. Don’t get me wrong: the how has to be near perfect, and it takes years to reach that point, but every good mixed martial artist can perform a takedown. When you’re fighting against the best, the when is the secret.

  I try to time my takedowns so they surprise my opponent. The best time to do that is to counter one of his attacks with a takedown. Think about it: when he throws a punch, the opponent doesn’t expect me to come toward him. He thinks I’m going to move backward or sideways and avoid the punch or, at worst, block it. But I don’t always do that. Sometimes, when I see the punch is coming because of a movement in his shoulder or the look in his eyes, I prepare for my own takedown. And when he throws that punch, before he has the time to hear the poof! of the air as his hand misses over my head, my shoulder is driving into his gut and I’m taking him straight onto the mat.

  In one of my earliest professional fights against Spratt, very early on he went for a high push kick. The normal reaction you see is defensive, but I used the moment to spring at him and take him down. It wasn’t a backward move, consciously trying to do things in reverse; it was a spontaneous reaction, plain and simple. I see openings and try to exploit them to my advantage. It was the last thing Pete—or, it seemed, anyone else—thought I would pull.

  It’s just the power of the unexpected.

  MASTER: One of the great features of Georges St-Pierre—and I’m absolutely certain it’s one of the great reasons for his success—is the profundity of his thinking with regards to the complex relationship between the component sports of MMA and the sport of MMA itself. I taught Georges a component martial art—Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and grappling. He taught me the interface between the various component martial arts. MMA is built up by the traditional combat sports, but in unison, it somehow rises above the content of those martial arts and becomes something quite different. Georges had many coaches, all of whom taught him component martial arts, but it was Georges himself who came up with the interface between them. In so doing, he went beyond the teachings of his masters.

  That was another one of Bruce Lee’s lessons: that no two people are the same. This is important because it means that a system that works for one person won’t be perfect for another. It means that individuality is a major part of expanding knowledge. Bruce called this aspect of training totality. He wanted people to become the most complete individuals possible. For me, that has always meant one thing: to keep the knowledge that is useful to me, and to let go the stuff that is useless. When I was in college, I would work on karate one day, boxing the next, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the next, Muay Thai the next, trying out different styles of fighting and filtering them for the most important, comfortable, useful elements. And even if Bruce Lee had been in the room watching my training sessions, I am the only one who truly knows what feels right versus what feels wrong, what I should keep compared to what I should discard.

  I see the world as a knowledge hardware store, and every day I’m just walking through the aisles. All along the aisles they have these knowledge keys. Each key opens a different door. When I see or hear about something new that I like, I pick up the key and open the door. If what’s behind that door makes me better at being who I really am, then I take it home with me. Once I get home, I take that new knowledge to one of my three workshops, and I start working on it. The two basic workshops I have are a) the Physical Workshop and b) the Mental Workshop. So, for example, doing gymnastics goes in the Physical Workshop, while philosophical discussions about visualization, for example, go into the Mental Workshop.

  The third workshop is the Fusion Workshop, where I put all that knowledge together in my own particular way. It’s where shootbox comes from. It’s what defines me best, to some.

  MASTER: Shootbox has been perhaps the single most important ingredient in the development of Georges’s success as a mixed martial artist. Shootbox is Georges’s own term: it refers to the act of integrating striking skills with takedown skills. It is arguably the most important facet of MMA, because it gives the mixed martial artist the capacity to determine the direction of a fight. It enables a mixed martial artist to choose where the fight occurs, whether it occurs in the standing position, whether it is taken to the fence, whether it is taken to a clinch or whether it is taken to the ground. It enables you to take an opponent away from his strengths and toward his weaknesses. The man who determines the direction of a fight has a massive advantage in the context of mixed martial arts.

  Georges is without question the greatest shootboxer in the history of mixed martial arts. No one integrates the skills of kickboxing, the skills of takedown and punching, better than he does. When did this first occur to me? The first time I saw him fight. He was so far ahead of the game it wasn’t even funny. Yet the development of shootbox is a long and complicated history, and it began long before I even knew who Georges St-Pierre was. No one ever even taught Georges to shootbox, and there’s a simple reason: nobody teaches it. No one has the overall breadth of skills to be able to do so. They merely scratch the surface.

  At any given time, in life or in battle, you only need to know two people to succeed: yourself and your opponent.

  You are in constant change. Your weaknesses change shape. Sometimes they disappear. Your strengths grow, they evolve, and they too change shape. Power is different when you combine it with wisdom. Wisdom allows you to use less power to accomplish more tasks.

  Your opponent, too, constantly changes. He changes shape. His nature, though, is always the same: he wishes to defeat you.

  When I prepare for one of my fights, I want to be as far away from my opponent’s thoughts as possible. I don’t want him to see me, to feel me or even to think of me, wherever he is. I, on the other hand, think of him constantly. I keep him in my mind’s eye and see him in every situation possible. I study him, how he moves, how he does battle, how he reacts. I try to reach an understanding of the best version of the truth on my opponent—to avoid the element of surprise.

  The only way to eliminate the element of surprise is to know yourself and know your adversary. It’s harder to know yourself than to know the enemy. Because when it comes to yourself, you have all these emotions—like p
ride, for example. You get carried away with your own emotions. In some of my fights, I lost control of myself, but if I’d known myself properly I would have calmed myself down immediately.

  The truth is that I don’t even want to make the opponent into an object of hatred. Hate isn’t rational or intelligent. There’s no point to it. Hate blinds individuals and removes reality from sight. There have been opponents whom I really didn’t like, or who said things about me that really pissed me off, but that’s just motivation. It’s part of the game.

  MASTER: You have to understand that shootbox somehow stands above its component parts. That is the key to understanding the greatness of Georges St-Pierre. Yes, he had good teachers, but all they taught him was components. What makes him great is not the components, it is the ability to go beyond those components into the sport of mixed martial arts itself (of which shootbox is one component—arguably the most important).

  GSP made a science of shootbox. That was not taught to him by any one person, that was self-taught. He invented it all on his own. And its development began out of simple necessity: self-defense.

  My front foot always points to my adversary. This is important because it stops my opponent from having or developing an angle on me. You can never allow that to happen because, quite simply, it exposes your blind side. It creates weakness. A fighter can’t afford to leave his flank or his blind side open, ever.

  Not addressing the opponent with your foot exerts a very negative influence on your power too. Misalignment reduces the power you can generate from one side of your body. So maybe you can throw a jab or a leg kick, but you make it very difficult to follow with a powerful combination from your strong side. In addition, you give the opponent more attack options while limiting your own angles and approaches.