Fighter: The Unauthorized Biography of Georges St-Pierre, UFC Champion

by Jerry Langton

St-Pierre is two-time and current champion of the UFC's most desired and hotly contested weight class. He has forced other fighters to go to great lengths in an effort to unseat him. But he's more than that. He's ramping up the popularity of the sport itself and the culture around it. St-Pierre is a marketer's dream. He's handsome, charismatic and funny in a self-effacing way. He's Canadian, fluently bilingual, came up from a difficult background with a few personal tragedies and has never been involved with drugs or crime or had his love life make any headlines. He's the man that the UFC is going to ride on in its quest to transform itself from niche market to mainstream. It's already beginning. While other UFC fighters have sponsors like gyms and equipment suppliers, St-Pierre has signed multi-million-dollar deals with brands such as Under Armour and is even following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Sidney Crosby as a spokesman for Gatorade. Fighter details the life of St-Pierre: how his talent, hard work and perseverance have paid off handsomely, and how his star has risen in the psyche of mixed martial arts fans around the world. It describes how he is held in high esteem by a huge number of Canadians despite the fact that his profession is looked down upon by many and is even illegal in several US States and Canadian Provinces. St-Pierre's ascent and fame have become a democratizing force, pressuring the establishment to take Mixed Martial Arts and Ultimate Fighting seriously in ways that it would not have without him.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2011

Reviews

[Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

A really long Wikipedia entry.

[Kaila · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Book Of Facts. There Were Like 5 Pages Of Behind The Scenes Info. Everything Else Was Very... Wikipedia Like. 3 Stars Because The Play By Play Of GSP's Fights Were Pretty Good...

[François Groulx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aide à connaître l'évolution de sa carrière qui est tout à fait incroyable mais on en apprend peu sur GSP lui-même.

[Kirsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's be clear on one thing: this book was not really a biography. I mean, yes, it's labelled as one and it's about a human being who was real and is interesting and worth talking about, but this was not a true biography. For one thing, biographies should actually be interesting, because if someone's super boring, who wants to read about that? Also, biographies should be focused on ONE individual, not like, thirty.

With excessive amounts of cutting a pasting (literally whole paragraphs were just lifted from a previous chapter and plunked into the next with changes names and dates) and WAY too much side information (not even background, just side) this book is just a super detailed list of his fights which weren’t all interesting or necessary, quite frankly. This felt like a grocery list where you’re listing not only the brand and price of everything but also where it is in the store and who else prefers to use these ingredients, and then you decide to read it to a room full of kindergartners. They’re not going to give a RIP and neither am I. So much excessive, useless information about OTHER fighters. This book is about GEORGES, not all of his opponents, so unless it’s super important for me to know how much this other guy made like 10 YEARS AGO before GSP was even in the UFC, don’t tell me about it. That’s now what I’m here for.

A lot of talk was made about how different baby G's training regime was compared to a lot of other fighters. Uh, if it's a huge deal, TELL ME ABOUT IT. I myself find the training strategies and boot camps one of the most interesting aspects of the UFC, and would have liked to read more about that part of GSP's career. (Pretty sure the cover boasts how the book talks "all about" his upbringing and background and stuff - it doesn't. Spoiler alert.)

Complete lack of enthusiasm and/or life in this writing, too. This is the UFC we’re talking about! Blood, violence, passion, raw, visceral energy – WHY WAS THIS NOT TRANSLATED? Considering I just read like, 200 pages of detailed fight rundowns, you’d think my heart rate might go up a little bit, especially since quite a few of them were really iconic and intense. Nope! Nada! Zip! Zilch! This dude bro just cannot write to save his life, and I really wish someone had told him that before he went and published this book. I’m also not pleased that the girl who leant this to me didn’t tell me how bad it was. #jokes I would have read it anyway but I would have liked to be prepared mentally for this atrocity, y’know?

Also.
A book about GSP and he’s not even on the cover? Who even decided this book was good enough to go to print? They quite clearly had mittens taped to their eyeballs and were told to just point either left or right to pick a cover, and they PICKED THE WRONG ONE. (Mittens on eyeballs, what even is going on here. We’re spiraling into madness, all because this silly book was such a disappointment.)

As others before me have said, and as others after me will say, this read like a horrible Wikipedia article or a poorly constructed high school essay where the student is going for a solid pass and nothing more. I'm still just amazed that a sport as diverse and exciting as MMA was reduced to this drivel. Appalling.

[Benjamin Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Fight The Unauthorized Biography of Georges St-Pierre UFC Champion by Jerry Langton. This is a biography about GSP a UFC Welterweight Champion. Georges grew up in Canada where he started training in MMA at a very young age. He broke into the UFC at UFC 46 and thus began his amazing run in MMA. He won his first two fights, and then he lost his first Championship fight against Matt Hughes. He rebounded and won his next six fights. In the sixth fight, he got another chance at the title and beat Matt Hughes this time with a TKO. He lost the title the next match to Matt Sierra. After that he went on nine fight winning streak that is still going on today. He retained his title back at UFC 83 and has defended it successfully 6 times. GSP is one of the most dominant fighters in the UFC, but he is one of the most humble and nicest people in the world. He grew up in hard times, and worked for everything in his life. He is a true person down to the bone. This book has pictures in the middle of it which are photographs of important events in his life. This book is meant for 12-18 year olds in the Advanced area, because of the content, and the vocabulary being used could be hard to understand. I personally loved this book, GSP is my hero, and he is a standup guy, which isn’t a reality in the sports world anymore. That type of person is hard to find.