When Dana White lauded Kamaru Usman as the welterweight GOAT over Georges St-Pierre: "You can't deny it"

Dana White once lavished praise on Kamaru Usman for his incredible run at welterweight and labeled him the division's GOAT over Georges St-Pierre. It was certainly a bold claim to make, but one that White felt strongly about.

Usman and St-Pierre are two of the most successful welterweights in UFC history. 'Rush' is a two-time welterweight champion and still holds the record for most consecutive welterweight title defenses (9) in the promotion's history.

Meanwhile, 'The Nigerian Nightmare' was an active champion during his reign and was in a situation where his challengers were competitors he had already defeated in the past.

In his appearance on Usman's Pound 4 Pound podcast last year, White claimed there wasn't any debate on who the welterweight GOAT is. The UFC CEO mentioned that he believes Usman's performances support his claim and even if fans dislike him, they have to respect his body of work. He said:

"When you become a fu**ing world champion in the UFC, you went through death fu**ing row of the baddest motherfu**ers in the sport in your division that you could possibly fight, right? So when you talk about a Kamaru Usman, who went through them twice, you might not like Kamaru, you might not like whatever it is you don't like about him, but you cannot fu**ing deny that he's the greatest welterweight of all time. You can't deny it."

Check out Dana White's comments below (36:07):

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Kamaru Usman highlights key difference between contenders in UFC and boxing

Kamaru Usman also chimed in and highlighted the key difference between contenders in the UFC and boxing.

In the aforementioned episode, Usman mentioned that UFC contenders don't have padded records and are constantly competing against the best available opponents, which is also why a champion like himself is respected more for their title reigns:

"You see these boxers and they're 22-0, 23-0, which is okay, I understand why they do it... And then you have guys here [in the UFC], guys could be 5-1, 6-1... they have experience to be able to go into a company like the UFC and be challenged. You're not picking to try to pad your record till you get to where you're good enough to fight championship caliber... you might be 8-1 or 9-2 and you might be a contender because you have that experience." [36:58]

Check out UFC on TNT's post highlighting Kamaru Usman's welterweight title reign below: