GSP makes his way to the PIT
@GeorgesStPierre will join Season 3 of #KarateCombat as Season Sensei! pic.twitter.com/N1JyvFscA4— Karate Combat (@KarateCombat) March 17, 2021
Georges St. Pierre is making a return to the combat sports realm, but he won’t be competing.
The former UFC middleweight and welterweight champion will join Karate Combat, a full-contact karate league founded in 2018, in a commentary role for the organization’s upcoming third season. St. Pierre’s official title will be “Season Sensei,” as he offers his “guidance, analysis and insights as the world’s top karate fighters battle for supremacy in The Pit, Karate Combat’s trademark fighting arena.”
“My first martial art was karate,” St. Pierre said in a release. “It was the foundation I built my career on. I always wanted to see an organization arise which would give a platform for elite full-contact karate fighters to compete, and that’s what I see in Karate Combat. I’m a big fan of what Karate Combat is doing and I hope I can help take things to the next level.”
St. Pierre was a 2nd Dan black belt in Kyokusin Karate by age 12 and was victorious in several national competitions before he moved to mixed martial arts, where he become one of the sport’s greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time. St. Pierre continued to pay homage to his karate roots during his walkouts, when he would wear a kimono, black belt and headband on his way to the Octagon.
St. Pierre hasn’t fought since UFC 217 in November 2017, when he submitted Michael Bisping at Madison Square Garden to claim the middleweight championship. The Tristar Gym standout was linked to a matchup with UFC lightweight king Khabib Nurmagomedov, but thus far that bout has not come to fruition.
Season 3 of Karate Combat is currently in production and is expected to be finished by late April.