Canadian mixed martial arts sensation Georges St. Pierre will be sidelined for at least six months with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. The ACL tear makes 2011 one of the worst in the career of the UFC Welterweight Champion as he’s had to pull out of two fights due to injuries. However, the native of Montreal said he’s going to come back as soon as possible and in the best shape of his life.

St. Pierre is one of Canada’s most popular athletes and also has a strong following in the U.S. He headlined UFC 129; the MMA organization’s biggest ever show, in April when he fought at the Rogers Centre in Toronto in front of 55,000 fans. He defended his title for the eighth consecutive time in that night against Jake Shields, but hasn’t been able to fight since.

Shields damaged St. Pierre’s eye during the bout and it took several weeks to heal. The Canadian was then scheduled to take on Nick Diaz in October at UFC 137, but Diaz went missing in action from a press conference and was taken off the card by UFC boss Dana White and replaced with Carlos Condit. St. Pierre then had to pull out of the fight due to a strained medial collateral ligament in his left knee and the fight was postponed until February.

Diaz then defeated B.J. Penn in a new main event on the card and was renamed the number one challenger for St. Pierre’s belt after accusing St. Pierre, of faking his injury. St. Pierre was slated to take on Diaz on Feb. 4 2012 at UFC 143, which is the annual Super Bowl show. But now that he’s out from six to nine months Diaz will take on Condit in the main event.

Dr. Sebastien Simard said St. Pierre hurt his knee while wrestling in training recently, but the pain didn’t go away. He then had an MRI which confirmed the champion had completely torn his ACL and had a small tear in his internal meniscus on his right knee. Simard said St. Pierre will have to have his knee surgically reconstructed and there’s no way he can possibly fight in his current condition. He added that he should be able to return to the octagon in between six and nine months as long as there aren’t any complications following the operation.

St. Pierre said he was on top of the world earlier in the year, but now he’s in a downward spiral that just seems to keep getting worse. But he said a true champion is able to deal with adversity and overcome his problems, which is what he aims to do. When he does finally fight again, it’ll be about a year and a half between fights. Because of this, St. Pierre will temporarily give up his championship and the Diaz vs Condit fight will be for the interim crown. It’s believed St. Pierre will fight the winner when he returns.

Georges St. Pierre is regarded as one of the best mixed artists around, especially by his countrymen in his native Canada, but even they will admit that his fights are a tad boring. Still, he’s regarded as one of the nation’s best athletes and has no problem selling out UFC cards wherever he fights. But the pressure’s on him now to raise his game to the next level as the UFC is counting on its starts to provide excitement for the fans now that it has a new television deal in place with Fox.

St. Pierre, the organization’s welterweight champion, admits that he’s not really that comfortable when dealing with the media, but realizes he’s going to have to deal with more attention and fanfare because of the unprecedented exposure the UFC is going to get. The native of Quebec has basically steamrolled through his weight division ever since 2008 when he won the championship belt for the second time. He’s disposed of all challengers along the way, but never really in an exciting fashion.

Right now, most UFC fans rank St. Pierre second when it comes to the world’s best pound-for-pound MMA fighters, right behind Anderson Silva of Brazil. The Canadian’s next scheduled fight is a highly anticipated and hyped grudge match against Nick Diaz of the U.S., and he said he wants to be known as the best pound-for-pound fighter of all time after the bout. But the 30-year-old realizes he may have to change his style slightly to achieve that recognition.

St. Pierre owns a fine record of 22-2 and has defended his belt six consecutive times and said he’ll remain in the sport until he feels he’s achieved his goal of being the best ever. He feels the UFC has changed a lot over the years since the time when head butts and groin strikes were deemed legal and his style is more suited to the new style of fighting where these attacks are outlawed.

He added that the new broadcasting deal with Fox will hopefully show doubters that the UFC has changed its style and cleaned up its act to some degree by banning some of the ultra-violent moves. He’s hoping that it can attract new sponsors and viewers by showcasing the organization’s talent on national television.

St. Pierre said the UFC is the perfect outlet for him since it allows him to showcase his fighting skills to a worldwide audience and make a good living at it. He admits that he’s not really a violent person, but everybody has a dark and violent side to them. He realizes he has to win and the only way he can do this is to inflict pain on his opponents, even though it’s not really within his character. Fans have noticed that St. Pierre sometimes lacks the killer instinct and they point to his last four fights as proof of this as they have all gone to the judges’ scorecards.

He said he definitely wants to reverse this trend against Diaz at UFC 143 and wants to knock him out or force him into submission. In fact, the easy-going Canadian seems to have made that his immediate mission and said Diaz is the most disrespectful person he’s ever met. St. Pierre said he understands the fans’ criticism of his fighting style, but he’s always looking to finish his opponents off instead of going the distance. However, he said it’s his aim to retain the title for as long as he can and he’ll take a win no matter how he achieves it.

St. Pierre will have the chance to show off his skills to the fans again on Feb. 4 when he takes on Diaz at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

It’s no secret that the UFC is raking in money hand over fist, but where the money’s going appears to be one. The mixed martial arts (MMA) company is selling out arenas all over the world. It just held its biggest ever promotion in North America on April 30^th when it sold 55,724 seats at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada, for a live gate of $12.1 million. But the fighters are still being paid peanuts when compared to other sports, especially boxing.

This has led Nick Diaz, who’s signed with Strikeforce, to say he wants to enter boxing to make some real money. He’s hoping to take on former IBF and IBO super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy (25-4, 17 Kos), who’s now 33 years old and has lost three of his last four fights.

But UFC boss Dana White doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He admits that Diaz has a clause in his contract which states he’s allowed to box and that deal should be honored. But he doesn’t think it’s in Diaz’s best interests to do so and he’s going to try and talk the MMA fighter out of it. It could be that White doesn’t want one of his fighters being embarrassed in a boxing ring, because there’s not really any other reason to not wanting him to take on Lacy.

However, Diaz, who recently defended his welterweight crown for the third time, isn’t necessarily taking the fight to prove he can box. He said he’s overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated by Strikeforce, which is owned by the UFC.

You can’t blame Diaz for wanting to jump ship, at least temporarily, because MMA fighters are and have been grossly underpaid for years. When you look at the numbers, mixed martial artists are simply getting ripped off by somebody. Brock Lesnar, the former UFC heavyweight king, took home $5.3 million in 2010, which was tops in the organization despite sky-high ticket prices and millions of pay-per-views sold.

Compare that to boxer Manny Pacquiao, who raked in $32 million and only had to fight twice to earn it. Boxing has long been associated with shady characters and the underworld, but compared to mixed martial arts, the elite boxers are making a hell of a living.

This is hard to understand since White would have you believe the UFC is a lot more popular than boxing and the pay-per-view numbers and live gates would support him. So just where is all of the money going? It’s definitely not going to the fighters who put their lives on the line every time they step into the octagon.

UFC fighters are getting a bigger piece of the pie these days, but it’s not enough. Kobe Bryant made $24.8 million last year for throwing a ball through a hoop and Alex Rodriguez took home $32 million for hitting a ball with a bat. MMA fighters are getting kicked in the face literally and figuratively when you consider what they’re getting paid.

For example, UFC 126, which was held in Las Vegas on Feb 5, drew a live gate of $3.6 million. It would have been higher, but more than 10 per cent of tickets were given away. The average price for a ticket was $373.00, ranging from $75 to $750. The base salary of all the fighters combined was just over $1.3 million, with the top salary being $275,000 and the lowest being just $6,000. Out of those salaries, insurance, taxes, and licenses etc. had to be deducted.

This means the fighters were paid off by just 36 per cent of the live gate, leaving 64 per cent as profit. However, we haven’t added in the money made from broadcasting the preliminary bouts on Spike TV and the pay per view totals. It was estimated that 750,000 pay-per-views were sold at about $50 a shot for $37.5 million. Therefore, the total gate was about $40 million, with the fighters receiving $1.3 million, which translates to just over three per cent.

Ironically it was a boxer, James Toney, who was paid the most at UFC 118. Toney embarrassed himself in the octagon and was paid $500,000 for lasting just 199 seconds against Randy Couture, who was paid $250,000. It was Toney’s first and last fight in the UFC. The headliner that night, lightweight champ Frankie Edgar, earned $96,000.

The UFC does have some overhead like everyone else and gives out bonuses at its card for things such as KO of the night and fight of the night. But when you see how little these guys are getting paid by Dana White’s organization, you can’t be blamed for thinking maybe Don King’s not such a bad guy after all.