Georges St.Pierre has been preparing for a while for his return to the Octagon. The talented Canadian has once again enlisted the help of John Danaher and his star students in an effort to prepare for the fight.
This is why Tonon recently spoke out about being a part of the camp – and also what it was like to be a part of camp for St Pierre vs Nick Diaz as a young grad school student.
Tonon told mmafighting:
“It started at the Nick Diaz fight (UFC 158 back in 2013),” Tonon said. “He was coming to Renzo’s years before that fight and I would intermediately meet him in training and stuff, but basically working with John (Danaher).
“John believed that I could be a healthy component to his camps and he asked me if I could travel and I was able to travel at the time. During the Nick Diaz camp, it was very stressful because I was still in school at the time – still in college – so I was asking my professors to hold back tests and stuff, and let me reschedule them, and all kinds of crazy stuff while I was flying out and driving out here (Montreal, Canada) once a week to train with him. I would drive or fly back, so it was stressful. I wasn’t sleeping a lot (laughs) but it was worth the experience.
“You know, I try to be as good as I can to Georges and as dedicated as I can to hopefully, you know, I’ve been training with him in these camps and it has obviously helped me, but hopefully in the future he’s willing to help me out on my MMA career and teach me some things he knows and help me a lot and give me some good advice.”
Tonon is embarking on his own MMA journey as he recently signed with ONE.
Garry Tonon Has Signed a deal to join ONE Championship As an MMA Fighter
And as for Bisping:
“There’s definitely a good chance that you see GSP submit Bisping, for sure. I don’t want to lead you into our plans and our strategies for the fight, I can’t give those details away, but is he capable of submitting Bisping? Absolutely. I’ll put it this way he’s far more capable of submitting Bisping than Bisping submitting Georges.”
Danaher wrote about the camp:
Counting down – the inversion of discipline: Georges St-Pierre and the team, Firas Zahabi, Freddie Roach, Jorges Blanco, Gordon Ryan, Phil Nurse, Erik Owings and myself get final preparation done in midtown Manhattan. Normally the challenge for athletes is to possess the discipline to get to the gym and train hard. In fight week there is a total inversion of discipline – now the discipline is required not to work out hard – BUT TO STOP YOURSELF FROM WORKING OUT HARD SO THAT YOU FOCUS ON LEAVING EVERYTHING YOU HAVE FOR THE CAGE RATHER THAN EXPENDING YOURSELF IN THE GYM. Just a light sweat, reinforcing the themes of the camp – the athlete has to be stopped from going too hard now. Now it’s light dinner time and then sleep and weight loss tomorrow – wishing you all the best from NYC and looking forward to the show at Madison Square Garden – America’s traditional home to combat sports.
