John Danaher — Renzo Gracie black belt, eponymous founder of the Danaher Death Squad, and Georges St-Pierre’s grappling coach — did not always feel GSP was going to make it out of UFC 217 with the belt around his waist.
In an interview on The MMA Hour less than an hour ago, Danaher told host Ariel Helwani that only two weeks before UFC 217, he thought GSP would get knocked out “nine times out of ten” by Michael Bisping.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Professor Danaher told Helwani. “Two weeks out before the fight, I had a talk with [St-Pierre’s Tristar coach] Firas Zahabi, and I straightforwardly said to him, ‘The Georges St-Pierre that I saw training today gets knocked out by Michael Bisping nine times out of ten. That was weeks before the fight.”
Danaher went into a lot of detail with Helwani over GSP’s medical issues during his training camp and admitted he was worried as to whether or not the former UFC Welterweight Champion would be able to make it to his main event match against Bisping at UFC 217.
However, the Danaher Squad founder refused to give a yes-or-no answer concerning GSP’s return to mixed martial arts, saying it was “an open question” and that it depended on how much St-Pierre was “in it.”
You can listen to Professor John Danaher’s interview on The MMA Hour below:
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