Georges St-Pierre recently revealed that having eye surgery is the reason he will only be available to fight until around November. Michael Bisping is also sidelined by a knee injury, so the UFC has pushed through with an interim title bout between Yoel Romero and Robert Whittaker this July.

While that situation seems like Bisping will be forced to fight the interim champion next, St-Pierre says he spoke to Dana White and is confident his middleweight title bout still happens.

“(Their plans were) changing, but I talked to Dana a few days ago,” GSP told TSN. “I tried to convince him that it was a good thing — that if I comeback, it needs to be in a situation that I put a lot of risk, but I need something that I can gain from it. So big risk big reward, and fighting Michael Bisping, that’s what it gives me.”

St-Pierres says he wants to retire Bisping, and eventually get back his record for most wins in UFC history. He says he relayed these and other reasons to Dana, trying to convince him to push through with the bout.

“I want to prove that skill and technique beats size and strength, and I talked to Dana. At the end of the conversation, he said ‘look, we’ll figure it out. We’ll see what happens,’ and hopefully it happens.

“I’m positive, I think it will happen. I think after the conversation I had with him — because the problem that I had with Dana, which is my mistake, is we talk through reporters. There’s declarations and stuff, so I think it’s good that we talked to each other, and we can see where our minds our at, and work together for the benefit of the UFC, of me, and for the fans.”

GSP went on to say that he wants to have a “historic moment” and have the title bout in Madison Square Garden. The timetable seems to work, with both St-Pierre and Bisping being sidelined due to injury, but the interim title may complicate things for them.

St-Pierre seems confident he gets what he wants, but as he said, this is Mixed Martial Arts, and you never really know what happens next.