Georges St-Pierre believes his Hall of Fame career would never have happened if not for Bruce Lee and his famous words of inspiration: “Be water.” It was a philosophy for life as much for combat and St-Pierre revealed he looked to Lee when he was plotting his rise in MMA, a journey that would take in both the UFC’s welterweight and middleweight titles, an overall record in the sport of 26-2, and, coming soon, a place in the UFC’s Hall of Fame. “Bruce Lee changed my life,” St-Pierre told the Post . “He always said be the perfect nemesis of your opponent. If he is a wrestler, strike him. If he is a striker, wrestle him. Fight him out of his comfort zone. “I believe I was a champion in my sport not because I was the best, it was because I was able to transform myself into the perfect nemesis of my opponent. Bruce Lee said ‘be like water’, and that’s what I was. It was all there in his philosophy.” St-Pierre is among a modern generation of UFC fighters who have looked to Lee as a role model in terms of how they hold themselves both inside and outside the Octagon. “He was an inspiration, even though he came before I was born,” said the Canadian fighter. Those words – “Be water” – were adapted by Lee in a speech on a TV chat show, and taken from the script for the 1960s series Longstreet , in which he co-starred. The point he was trying to make is that people should adapt to their surroundings, and to the situations they find themselves in. They’ve reappeared this week as the title of a new documentary, screening as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series on Sunday night (US time). The Post caught up with St-Pierre to talk about his own career, with that spot in the UFC’s Hall of Fame pending, and the 39-year-old turned attention to his time as a bullied child in the backblocks of Quebec, when he was looking for heroes. Lee loomed large back then, through films such as his breakthrough Way of the Dragon (1972) and then Enter the Dragon (1973), released after the martial arts star had passed away owing to a cerebral oedema on July 20, 1973, aged 32. But, St-Pierre said, the more he dug in to Lee’s own story, the more he began to focus on his teachings, through the jeet kune do (“the way of the intercepting fist”) style of kung fu and philosophy Lee established and wrote about. That included advice about mixing up combat styles – a theory hitherto unaccepted in Lee’s lifetime but one that gradually took root, and helped the sport of MMA emerge. St-Pierre world craft his own fight game through learning karate, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai and boxing and said there were specifics, in Lee’s teachings, that gave him an advantage when it came to stepping inside the Octagon. “I used a lot of his tricks in my fights,” explained St-Pierre. “Bruce Lee always said to use your longest weapon against the narrowest point of your opponent. That’s what I have been doing all my life. “He focused on his lead hand and lead leg. I used as lot of my front leg, a lot of my jab and a lot of my superman punch because of what he said. I won a lot of my fights thinking about what he had taught me.”