Team GSP with coaches Greg Jackson, John Danaher, Phil Nurse and Firas Zahabi with the champ.

Muay Thai coach Phil Nurse has been helping train Georges St-Pierre since 2006 when he won the welterweight title from Matt Hughes at UFC 65. Few people know St-Pierre as well as Nurse.

Nurse has seen St-Pierre take on all comers and stamp out the best 170-pound fighters in the world. The man has not even lost a round in over three years.

More and more there is talk of St-Pierre moving up to the 185-pound weight class to face that division’s reigning king, Anderson Silva. Nurse is confident in his fighter’s abilities, but there is much to consider.

For one thing, St-Pierre has said if he goes up in weight he intends to stay there. He does not want to bounce back and forth between middleweight and welterweight because of the harm it does the body.

Nurse had his own thoughts on the process, a way to test it out to see how St-Pierre would react with the extra weight. Speaking exclusively to ProMMAnow.com presents: MMA Press Box Radio on Wednesday, Nurse talked about what would need to happen for St-Pierre to make the jump:

“He still needs to put more weight on for sure. He still needs to put more weight on. And that’s not a slow process. It is something he would have to do. Just knowing Georges, he likes to fight the best. He wants to fight the best the best the best. So if the fight came and everything was in the right place, the weight was in the right place, and you know, I think he would take it. Me as his trainer, I’m confident in him and his abilitiy, but it’s not a straightforward answer. Weight, getting injured, it’s a bit tricky the answer of how you get there [185 lbs.] and how long it takes you to get there and feel…you can put too much weight on too and slow down, the same thing you mentioned about endurance. That can play a part too. So we’d have to go there, put the weight on and kind of play with it ourselves and see, is his agility still there, is his speed still there, is what we see as strengths in place, and then make a decision.”

What are your thoughts ProMMAnow.com (www.prommanow.com) readers? Is St-Pierre ready to move up to middleweight or should he stay at 170″

You can listen to Nurse’s entire interview as he responds to criticism about St-Pierre not finishing fights, training Frankie Edgar for Gray Maynard and much more by going here: ProMMAnow.com presents: MMA Press Box Radio with guest Phil Nurse.

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