As part of his recent press tour to promote his appearance in Marvel’s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Georges St-Pierre spoke to GQ about how he spent his first million dollars.The former two-division UFC champion found a lot of success in the cage, and became one of mixed martial arts’ icons and stands among the sport’s best fighters in history. He’s also doing well now on his chosen career path after fighting, and has earned good paydays in recent years.
But what did GSP do after earning his first million? Well, in the video, he broke down how he helped a lot of family and friends, and also invested in training and recovery to further his career. Among the very few things he bought for himself though, were actually dinosaur fossils.
As he discussed a few times in the past, St-Pierre is a bit of a dinosaur nerd, and says he would’ve been a paleontologist instead if he never became an MMA fighter.
“I’m really into dinosaur fossils. I love paleontology, and I bought for I would say $20,000, a Megalodon tooth, Mosasaurus jaw, Tyrannosaurus Rex, all kinds of different animals that used to live long ago” St-Pierre said.
“Firas (Zahabi), my head coach, gave me another Megalodon tooth — a big one! It was my favorite fossil that I have, because it represents the alpha predator, the GOAT predator of all time.”
Unfortunately, one of St-Pierre’s prized possessions got destroyed recently.
“That tooth I have — at one point I was fixing my sound system, it make a lot of noise and it vibrate, and my tooth fell on the floor and broke!” St-Pierre explained. “I still have it today. I can’t glue it, it shattered in pieces.”
He also posted on social media about this incident last January, calling it one of the “most frustrating moments” of the past year.
Apart from breaking down the things he bought, St-Pierre also revealed some interesting details from his UFC contracts, and the uphill climb to earn money in mixed martial arts.
“My first fight ever, I earned $1,100, because my opponent did not make the weight,” St-Pierre revealed. “Otherwise, I would have probably made even less, because I got 30% of his purse.”
After five fights in the regional scene, St-Pierre finally made it to the UFC, the biggest promotion in the sport, but he didn’t earn much either. In his first UFC bout in 2004 — a decision win over Karo Parisyan — he was paid just $3000 to show, and $3000 to win. At the time, St-Pierre was also studying and working alongside his MMA career.
“Things were so tight to me, that I couldn’t afford to lose a fight,” he said. “If I lose a fight, I would have been in debt.”
When he got his first title shot against Matt Hughes, it was only then when St-Pierre decided to drop his studies to focus more on training and fighting. He would lose that bout, but eventually go on a tear en route to becoming a champion and one of MMA’s greatest fighters ever.
Interestingly enough, St-Pierre revealed that he only earned his first million dollars, already approaching his 14th bout in the UFC against Jon Fitch. This was when he was already a two-time champion and had already headlined some of the best selling UFC PPVs at the time.
“When you start making money in combat sports, you have to keep in mind that it’s very hard to reach the top, but it’s very easy to go back down,” St-Pierre said. “Make sure you invest on yourself because if you dont get better, the game will catch up to you.”
“I worked very hard, and I also I was very lucky,” he said. “Because I had the chance to meet incredible mentors, and the stars were all aligned for me.”
