Georges St-Pierre has revealed he wanted to face Anderson Silva and Khabib Nurmagomedov in his UFC career.
The UFC Hall of Famer is regarded as one of the best fighters of his generation, winning gold in the welterweight and middleweight division.
He stepped away from the Octagon in 2019 and did so knowing two massive superfights never happened.
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St-Pierre was always linked to two names - middleweight king Anderson Silva and the unbeaten Khabib Nurmagomedov.
He told Helen Yee in a recent interview: "I always wanted to be known as the best and be the best, and there are two fights that never materialised that could have been made – but for certain reasons did not materialise.
"The first one was against Anderson Silva, and the other one was against Khabib, but for certain reasons it did not happen."
Silva has been called one of the greatest of all time by UFC president Dana White and had an MMA career which spanned across four decades.
He held the UFC middleweight title for a whopping 2457 days between October 14 2006 and July 6 2013, which is still the longest title reign in promotion history.
Nurmagomedov, meanwhile, dominated the lightweight division's biggest names before retiring with an overall record of 29-0 in 2020.
'The Eagle' chose to retire following the death of his father and trainer, Abdulmanap, and was even offered a return to action with St-Pierre.
He politely declined the offer and knew St-Pierre had been out of action for two years himself at that point.
St-Pierre is content with the fights not happening and believes the perfect moment was missed.
"When you’re a fighter, you need the two fighters and the promoter to make a fight happen," the 41-year-old continued.
"Even if the two fighters want, but the promoter doesn’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen. Each fighter brings their terms that they want, then they negotiate, and then it’s up to the promoter to make that happen. It did not happen for these two guys.
"Fights are made also because of the fans, because of the two guys, the promoter – but also, timing has a lot to do with it. Anderson Silva and I, and Khabib and I, it’s always a question of timing.
"If you make this fight today, it’s not going to be the same because we lost the timing."
Topics: Georges St Pierre, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Anderson Silva, UFC
Daniel Marland