(Picture the pad as Koscheck’s face, Georges.)

We spoke with the longtime coach and trainer of UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, Firas Zahabi this weekend about the recent claims made by his charge’s opposing The Ultimate Fighter 12 coach, Josh Koscheck that GSP likely uses steroids. Part of Kos’ argument focused on the fact that St-Pierre was in shape all year round, insinuating that most fighters get fat when they don’t have fights coming up. Maybe that’s why GSP’s a champion and Koscheck isn’t?

According to the head of Zahabi MMA, there is absolutely no truth to Koscheck’s baseless claims, that were backed by BJ Penn, who retracted his retraction regarding similar claims he made last year in a video he posted on his website last week.


"A lot of people have been writing into [BJPenn.com] and asking me if I called Josh Koscheck about the GSP situation. And no, the answer is I have not talked to Josh Koscheck, but he must have been reading my mind. He must have mental telepathy," Penn said. "Koscheck is doing some great mental warfare, trying to get inside GSP’s head and as for how that goes, who cares? It’s none of my business; I could care less."

Zahabi told us that St-Pierre hasn’t paid any attention to Penn and Koschek’s opinions of him and says that Georges’ impressive physique is a result of a combination of hard work and good genetics.

"Listen. Nobody knows Georges or spends more time with him than I do and I can tell you that he absolutely does not use any performance enhancing drugs. He works harder than everyone in the gym and constantly pushes his body to the limit to push past plateaus. He also has very good genetics. If you look at pictures of him when he was younger, he was always very lean. I’m sure we all know guys who can eat like pigs and don’t put on any weight. That’s Georges. Look up ‘ectomorph’ on the Internet. I actually recently wrote an article on this body type," Zahabi explained. "I guess claims like this just speak to the hard work and results of Georges, [strength and conditioning coach] Jonathan Chaimberg and myself. Georges doesn’t let things like this bother him. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on the Internet, but he’s also had to get used to stuff like this, because there have been people saying bad things about him since he started fighting, no matter how many amazing things he’s done. He knows to not take it to heart."

Due to prior commitments, including a teaching stint at the MMA Expo on the weekend and several fighters he has to train for upcoming fights, Zahabi says that he had to pass on a coaching gig on the SPIKE TV reality show.

"Unfortunately, I was way too busy and had a lot of other commitments, so I wasn’t able to be on the show, but the other coaches Georges brought will do a great job."

St-Pierre’s TUF 12 coaches are rumored to be Chaimberg,  John Danaher, Shawn Williams, Phil Nurse and Jean-Charles Skarbowsky.