GSP to Coach on Next TUF Season

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Montreal’s Georges St-Pierre will be one of the coaches of the next season of The Ultimate Fighter and will be opposite the winner of Saturday’s No. 1 welterweight contender bout between American Josh Koscheck and England’s Paul Daley at UFC 113: Machida vs. Shogun 2 in Montreal.

UFC president Dana White made the official announcement at the end of a question-and-answer for UFC Fight Club members Friday afternoon.

"This is the perfect place to announce it," said White, who admitted having the UFC welterweight champion, and extremely popular Canadian fighter, as a coach was long overdue. St-Pierre was a trainer on Season 4 of the show, where fellow Quebecer Patrick Cote was a contestant.

The announcement drew huge cheers from a crowd that filled a handful of sections in the Bell Centre for the Q&A with UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar.

"I’m very happy to be a coach," St-Pierre said. "I’ll be watching tomorrow’s fight very carefully."

White already announced Thursday that the Koscheck-Daley winner will take on St-Pierre for the belt, a match that will now take place at the end of TUF 12, which will involve lightweight contestants.

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Earlier in the week Daley said he’d make a great coach. Should he win, he would become the second Englishman to coach a season of the reality show, joining Michael Bisping, who coached in the ninth season. Bisping was opposite Dan Henderson for the The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K. and a grudge developed between the two during the series.

The chance to be a coach on the show adds yet another storyline to Saturday’s co-main event matchup, which has already seen Daley employ some tricks to try to get under the skin of Koscheck.

Daley started an internet thread inviting people into a Photoshop contest involving an image of Koscheck. He said he received over 40,000 entries and he revealed the winner at Thursday’s press conference -- a picture of famous painter Bob Ross (as it appears on his Wikipedia page) with Koscheck’s face superimposed on it, playing off the late Ross’s signature afro with Koscheck’s curly, but less accentuated hairstyle.

Koscheck wasn’t about to let it unnerve him.

"I didn’t see the Photoshop thing," Koscheck said. "I don’t care about that. I’m focused on winning."

Koscheck even said he would pass up an offer to see his hometown Pittsburgh Penguins live in action Thursday night against the Montreal Canadiens.

"I have to worry about the fight," added Koscheck, who believes the edge is all on his side come fight time. "I think I have a lot of ways to finish this fight, whereas he only has one way. I’ve got to take advantage right off the get-go."

Daley said he doesn't have any ill feelings toward Koscheck and that the contest was for fun.

Just like when BJ and Pulver coached, everybody is going to want to be on GSP's team

That will be pretty cool, but I think GSP will dominate both of those guys.

If Matt Serra was to coach the other side then it would be Epic.

If Serra was anywhere close to a title shot, maybe. But he's so far down on the list it'll never happen.

Has GSP done TUF yet? I can't remember.

Nope. He was rumored to do the current one instead of Chuck/Tito against Dan Hardy, but that obviously didn't happen.

Matt Serra did it thought right? It was Serra vs. Hughes wasn't it? Who else do you think would be a good TUF coach?

babaganoosh wrote:

If Serra was anywhere close to a title shot, maybe. But he's so far down on the list it'll never happen.

True, I just thought it would be sweet with the whole Serra/ St. Pierre Heat

Concrete Jesus wrote:

Matt Serra did it thought right? It was Serra vs. Hughes wasn't it?

Yeah it was Serra vs Hughes and I actually just took a quick look at that season and not many good fighters really came out of it.

Concrete Jesus wrote:

Who else do you think would be a good TUF coach?

2 guys I'd be interested in seeing coaching against each other would be Nate Marquardt and Demian Maia, which would lead to a rematch I'd like to see as well. Another guy that comes up would actually be Frank Mir, but I'm not sure if there's another heavyweight that I'd like to see coach opposite of him.

And I'm not sure how good he'd be, but it's be interesting as hell, would be Diego Sanchez.

Brock has not been around MMA long, but I think he would be a great coach. He would bring some entertainment for sure.

I don't know if Brock is really polished enough to be a coach though. Right now, he relies a lot on his natural ability rather than technique and not every athlete he'll get to coach is going to be so naturally gifted. He'd be entertaining no doubt and I'd love to see what he could do to one of those cheap UFC doors

Brock could just walk through the door. It would look like the Hulk blasting through it.

It's almost as if they don't spend any money on those doors anymore because they know the coaches will break a couple during the season

Or they did not buy some good, strong doors because they did not want Tito and Rampage to break their hands on the doors. The whole structure, minus the gym section, looks like just some dry wall and paint.