“My idol in my youngest years” – Jiri Prochazka shares excitement at Georges St-Pierre’s acknowledgment

Jiri Prochazka is set to challenge for the UFC light heavyweight title on June 11 in Singapore, and the avid martial artist has the support of Georges St-Pierre.

In a recent interview with James Lynch, St-Pierre was asked about Prochazka and said:

“I enjoy watching his fights, 100%. He is a great striker and very dangerous. Perhaps his work on the ground is not so good, we did not see him too much on the ground. He hasn’t gone through many checks yet. I would like to see more of his fights. But he is very impressive. I think he will be the champion.”

When Lynch talked to Prochazka in a new interview, ‘Denisa’ was excited to hear the praise from one of his idols. He said:

“That’s why I’m fighting! To show the people the beauty of the martial arts. And to hear that from Georges St-Pierre who’s my idol in my youngest years … it’s amazing. And I’m very glad for that and I just have to say I will show my best in the next fight.”

Jiri Prochazka is facing Glover Teixeira at UFC 275 in what will be the 42-year old Teixeira’s first title defense since winning the belt off Jan Blachowicz in October 2021. Teixeira is on a six fight win streak with five of those victories coming via finish. However, the streak Prochazka carries over from Japan’s Rizin FF promotion sits at twelve wins, with eleven coming via KO or TKO.

Watch the full interview between Jiri Prochazka and James Lynch below:

Jiri Prochazka has been working on his wrestling at Henry Cejudo’s Fight Ready gym

Georges St-Pierre isn’t the only person questioning Jiri Prochazka’s wrestling credentials. As ‘Rush’ said, it’s not that there’s a hole in Prochazka’s game, there just hasn’t been a lot of situations where he’s had to wrestle in the cage.

Regardless, Prochazka has been hard at work upgrading his wrestling skills at Arizona’s Fight Ready gym, home to coach Eric Albarracin and UFC wrestling standouts like Henry Cejudo and Mark Madsen. Prochazka told Lynch:

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“That experience with them, it was a big school for me about wrestling because they are very very great specialists for wrestling. THere is a lot of wrestlers which trained that wrestling since childhood and it was amazing to watch how they work, how many details they see and that’s why I started to … not change my style but include the wrestling in my style and making my stand-up, open it for these wrestling techniques.”

Glover Teixeira is a solid wrestler and submission expert, so any help Prochazka can get staying upright in their UFC 275 title fight will be a big help.