You’d be hard-pressed to find an MMA fan or analyst who wouldn’t put Georges St-Pierre on the sport’s proverbial Mt. Rushmore as one of the best of all time.

But the man himself isn’t quite willing to say he was the best to ever do it. If he thinks that way, perhaps his humility won’t allow him to proffer that to the masses.

Instead, St-Pierre told ESPN.com‘s Ariel Helwani in a live video chat Tuesday that while he was considered the best of the best while the long-reigning UFC welterweight champion, it only would’ve taken one person on the right day to knock him from his pedestal.

“It’s just a matter of timing,” St-Pierre said. “Everybody can beat anybody on any given day. There are guys that have your number – you don’t know why. (But) they have your number. In the fight game, it’s not a straight line.”

St-Pierre (26-2 MMA, 20-2 UFC) walked away from the sport after a November 2013 defense of his 170-pound title against Johny Hendricks. Nearly four years later, he returned as a middleweight and submitted Michael Bisping to win the 185-pound belt and become a rare two-division UFC champion.

The Canadian often is joined by former UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva, current light heavyweight champ Jon Jones and former flyweight champ Demetrious Johnson in conversations about the best pound-for-pound fighters in MMA history. But after his middleweight title win over Bisping, he vacated that belt, as well, and hasn’t fought in two and a half years.

He knows a little something about the best in the world getting beaten on any given day. A little more than 13 years ago, he was stunned by “Ultimate Fighter” Season 4 winner Matt Serra with a first-round TKO at UFC 69 and lost the welterweight title. That fight is considered one of the biggest upsets in MMA history.

Two wins and a year later, he avenged the setback and stopped Serra to get the belt back. The Serra loss was his last. He went on a 13-fight run after that – with 12 of those wins coming in title fights.

The stats are there to say he arguably was the best to ever do it, and he said there was a time he thought that way, too.

“When I was young, I wanted to be the best of all time,” St-Pierre said. “But when I got older and had more experience, I realized it’s just a fugazi – it doesn’t exist. You can’t be the best guy on the planet. There’s always one guy that will beat you. … There’s guys better than you who maybe are not fighting. That’s how the world works. There will always be one guy that will have your number, and he will beat you. There’s no (best) guy.”