UFC Champ Georges St. Pierre speaks on being bullied??

  It's hard to believe that Georges St. Pierre (GSP for short) who is the Welterweight Champion of UFC and known the world over was a victim of bullying when he was a kid growing up in his native Montreal, Quebec Canada. See the yahoo sports article and fight magazine links below

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=dw-wetzel_georges_st_pierre_addresses_bullying_042611

http://www.fightmagazine.com/mma-magazine/mma-article.asp?issid=6&aid=77

Yet, growing up was very tough for him. He was picked on by the older and bigger kids due to his size and the fact that he said he was more intelluctual than they were. This meant that he talked differently then they did or that he wasn't a great athlete so those bullies mistreated him. Though he excelled at school he feared going just cause of the harassment.

However, at a young age he got very involved in karate with the encouragement of his father and soon with more training into his teens he soon was able to defend himself, win fights to where nobody was able to mess with him. He almost gave up karate right after his teacher died of cancer when GSP was only 14. That was  until a friend introduced him to a UFC video just as the sport was taking off in the late 90's-early 00's. GSP fell in love with the sport. He soon began to incorpate more martial arts such as Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu and kickboxing into his training.

He began to be good enough to win his first 5 fights and fought his first UFC PPV in 2002 at UFC 46. Today he is a 2 time and current UFC Welterweight Champion, has been voted MMA fighter of the year from a few publications, and has a record of 20-2. And he is just as old as me, 29 years.

I just wanted to write about him to prove that as strange as it sounds a guy like GSP who is one of the best MMA fighters today was bullied as a kid but rose above it to become successful as he today. I kind of relate to his story coming from someone who is bullied himself when I was younger and try to turn a positive into a negative. I guess both of us used our talents and interests into sports to make ourselves become better people and not let the negative ones try to bring us down.

From the Yahoo Article I agreed with what he had said about being picked on that it won't last forever and things change. He Quotes, "When you’re young you think everything will stay the same. It won’t. Everything will change. You just have to keep going.” And he right. I think being a victim himself at a young age he is trying to encourage those to use their talents to rise above their aggervators.

There is so much I'm trying to learn about watching UFC or any other MMA fighting organization of what is involved but this story stuck out to me since it involved someone as successful as Georges St. Pierre and what he had to overcome to become one of the fighters in the world. This weekend he is defending his welterweight title against Jake Shields in Toronto in front of an estimated 50,000 in the Rogers Centre see the picture above. They said if he wins UFC wants to do a superfight in the future with him and Anderson Silva. Now that would be a sweet fight. But, no matter what happens Saturday Night he already has won a fan in me. I'm D-money and that's my two cents.