According to a March 6 report from MMA Fighting, UFC champ Georges St-Pierre thinks Benson Henderson only called him out because "Smooth" was trying to reap the monetary benefits from pay-per-view sales that a fight against the Canadian legend would undoubtedly bring.
"There are a lot of people who want to make money on pay-per-view," St-Pierre said in a one-on-one phone interview with MMA Fighting. "But only a few fighters who can do it. So the quickest way to try to get one of those fights is to try to call out one of those fighters who can make money. It's a way to try to cut the line."
St-Pierre says Henderson isn't on the radar, as he's preparing to do battle with Nick Diaz.
"I've got a fight against Nick Diaz coming up next week and that's what I'm thinking about right now," St-Pierre said. "After that there are other welterweight contenders on the way. Ben Henderson isn't a fight I'm thinking about right now."
As for Henderson, he essentially admitted that his call out of St-Pierre wasn't driven by any personal animosity.
"Everyone's going out calling out fights: 'Oh, I want to fight this guy, I want to fight that guy,'" Henderson told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). "I didn't know – if that's how the UFC works, if that's the type of organization it is where you can just willy-nilly go around calling out who you want to fight next, then sure. If that's how the UFC as a business operates, you call out who you want next, and that's your next guy, I understand that. I'll do that – I'll call out who I want next.
"But if that's not how it's supposed to work, if that's just a fluke, just one or two rare cases of it happening in the UFC and you're not supposed to call out who you want next, then whatever. Cool – I won't call out who I want next and I'll face whoever they put in front of me, like always."
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