Georges St-Pierre

Georges St-Pierre won titles at two weights and then retired while holding one, which almost nobody in fighting manages: the sport is structured to keep you until it takes everything.

He was born at Saint-Isidore, in Quebec, on 19 May 1981 with the Sun on the final degree of Taurus and five of his ten planets in air. Taurus at its end is steadiness that has become immovability, and that much air is an unusual amount of thinking for a fighter: the element that observes, compares and keeps a working distance. A technical, analytical competitor rather than a brawler is what that combination describes, and it is the account his career actually supports.

Mars is in hard contact with Saturn eleven minutes of arc apart, the tightest thing in the chart. Drive against an immovable limit, which in a body is discipline and in a career is the willingness to train for years for one night. Set against it, the Sun faces Uranus across the chart half a degree off: identity against the planet of the sudden reversal, which is both the appeal of the sport and the reason to leave it before it decides for you.

Five of his ten planets are retrograde, including Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto, so the heavy half of the chart runs inward and keeps its working private. Three of those group in Libra, the sign of other people and of balance: a fighter whose public manner was conspicuously polite is that group doing its job.

Retiring as champion is the Mars and Saturn aspect having the last word rather than the Uranus one. On a chart with the Sun this immovable and that much air to calculate with, walking away at the top is not restraint. It is the only move that was ever going to look correct from inside.