From the octagon to the stage: Former UFC champion Georges St-Pierre ready to share his story

Neil Davidson · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Jul 10, 2025 10:56 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

Former UFC champion Georges St-Pierre wants to stock his story.

From being bullied arsenic a kid to holding down 3 jobs portion going to college. And the accent and challenges helium faced successful his emergence to being a two-division mixed martial arts champion.

The 44-year-old St-Pierre, a autochthonal of Saint-Isidore, Que., who is simply a subordinate of some the Canada Sports Hall of Fame and UFC Hall of Fame, volition debut "GSP: The Instinct of a Champion" astatine Toronto's Meridian Hall connected Sept. 29 with different Canadian dates to travel successful 2026.

The anticipation is to past instrumentality the amusement to the U.S. and different countries.

St-Pierre is nary alien to speaking publicly, having made plentifulness of speeches to firm and different gatherings. The speaking circuit volition instrumentality the signifier of a unrecorded interview, followed by an assemblage Q-and-A.

"I volition explicate however I woody with fear, with stress. Background stories. Different protocol and tricks that I utilized passim my career," St-Pierre said from Thailand wherever helium presently filming a world amusement to aerial adjacent twelvemonth connected Netflix.

WATCH | Georges St-Pierre calls Order of Canada his 'greatest honour':

He believes the September amusement volition enactment for some fans and those who anticipation to larn thing that they tin use to their ain lives.

"A batch of what I bash is ever oriented towards the creation of warfare — successful presumption of performance, however to beryllium the best. And to beryllium capable to scope the top," helium explained.

St-Pierre officially retired successful February 2019 with a 26-2-0 record, having won the middleweight rubric successful his past combat astatine UFC 217 successful November 2017. He antecedently was the longtime welterweight champion. 

Sharing his communicative was hard astatine first, helium acknowledges.

"Now clip has passed and I tin speech astir a batch of things successful my beingness that I was not truthful comfy to speech astir erstwhile I was younger," helium said. "Things similar my dada erstwhile helium was drinking and however it would impact me. Because erstwhile helium discontinue drinking, helium became my No. 1 inspiration. I saw however hard it was [for him].

"So everything started antagonistic successful the opening but past aboriginal it became a affirmative thing, due to the fact that it became an inspiration for me. When helium made that sacrifice [forgoing alcohol], it truly reunited my household and it bound america backmost together. It's thing that had a immense interaction connected my beingness … I consciousness precise fortunate and precise privileged to person a large relation model."

St-Pierre comes from humble beginnings connected Montreal's South Shore. His begetter spent much than 60 hours a week connected a floor-recovering business, installing carpet and ceramics. His parent nursed the elderly.

St-Pierre earned his ain floor-recovering certificate earlier making it large successful MMA.

Tony Gattillo, the Montreal-based shaper of the show, believes St-Pierre's communicative tin service arsenic inspiration.

"I deliberation radical volition permission the amusement precise motivated and volition privation to use definite things that Georges is going to share … for the archetypal time. And motivate the people," said Gattillo, a erstwhile vocalist present moving down the scenes successful the amusement industry. "And assistance them recognize that if you privation to beryllium a champion successful your beingness oregon you privation to scope a definite goal, determination is hard enactment to do. There's dedication. There's discipline. And intelligence toughness."

When St-Pierre entered the modern helping of the UFC Hall of Fame successful 2020, helium was 1 of 7 UFC fighters to triumph a rubric successful 2 value classes. He retired connected a 13-fight triumph streak with a grounds that included 13 rubric combat victories, the 2nd astir successful UFC history, and boasted the astir strikes landed (2,591), astir important crushed strikes landed (461) and astir takedowns (90).