Georges "Rush" St-Pierre is a mixed martial artist from St-Isidore, Quebec. Also known as GSP, he is a mixed martial artist who helped to revolutionize the sport with his creativity. In a time where mixed martial arts was just beginning to grow under the newly established Ultimate Fighting Championship, GSP revolutionized the sport with his creativity. In order to best understand how his creativity came, one must look back to his childhood.
While training, he fell in love with MMA and began to look at a career in fighting now that he was able to defend himself. When he arrived to the UFC, it was in the early development stages where fighters were often one-dimensional. Fighters would often perfect their strengths whether it be in boxing or wrestling, but GSP trained himself to be a well rounded fighter so that he could attack the weaknesses of the other styles. This was extremely creative as he was the first fighter to ever train this way, and it led to him becoming a one time Middleweight Champion, a two time Welterweight Champion, 9 welterweight title defenses, and a UFC Hall of Famer. Because of this creative style, people everywhere began to adapt to become well versed in all of the martial arts in order to be successful. In turn, he has helped to create a new, more skillful approach to fighting.
Sources:
https://www.gspofficial.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_St-Pierre
It is very interesting to look at an athlete through the geneplore lens. Most of the time, we associate the brainstorming that comes with the generative stage to more artistic ideas. Fighting in the UFC where there are limited rules on required fighting styles gave GSP the room to use his creative chops to expand his repertoire to counter the strengths of other fighters. I am sure he also had a team help him, but his successful highlights his abilities to use creative processes to defeat the other tactics employed by fighters.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that St-Pierre trained in so many different techniques, and to see his success come from his creativity in merging the different styles of training. This post does a great job at explaining the different styles of fighting and who St-Pierre is as a person, which is super helpful for readers with little knowledge on the subject. On a broader level, I love how you touched on creativity in sports. Oftentimes, it seems as if the rules and statistics that govern sports take away from an individual’s ability to be creative as a player.
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