I have been a serious fan of UFC for about two years now and I have never seen a GSP fight that didn't bore me to tears.
The latest example was his demolition of Dan Hardy at UFC 111. All five rounds were the same thing. He shot on Hardy in the first 30 seconds then held him down for 4 and a half minutes. And on those rare occassions he did get up, GSP wrestled him right back down.
I don't deny his greatness. On a scale of 1 to 10 his takedowns are a 20. No one stuffs them, if he wants you down, he gets you down. And when he gets you down he keeps you down. There is no one in the world at 170 who can beat him when he's doing this.
But I do question the rest of his game. Despite controlling Hardy for 24 minutes of a 25 minute fight he didn't fuck him up that badly. Also, several submissions attempts failed in due to Hardy's toughness but also because GSP didn't finish them.
In his last four fights he's gone 19 of a possible 20 rounds and avoided four straight decisions when BJ penn's corner threw in the towel. If GSP is so great why can't he finish anyone?
I did once see an exciting GSP fight. In this one he didn't take the fight to the ground right away and got decked by Matt Serra who pounded him out in the biggest upset of all-time.
I think it's because of that fight that GSP is unwilling to take even the slightest chance in any of his other fights. Which is good for his record, but not good for the PPV audience.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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4 comments:
I do vhat I gatta do to vin da fight, I don't vanna get caught up in a...how you say..da style points.
I choose to entertain da female fans and da gay by keeping my trunks tight to my ball sack.
Also, Dan 'Ardy 'as really 'eavy 'ands and I didn't want 'im to 'it me.
Heh heh, very funny, and accurate (re: the comments). I agree with you though 100%. If you go back to the days of him as a challenger, he really did take a strong striking game to Matt Hughes. One of the sickest strikes in my MMA memory was GSP vs Hughes when he faked a leg kick, and instantly changed it to a 100% accurate head kick. Bam, champion....then boring.
This is a somewhat common trend though. If you look back at Tim Sylvia, he did the same thing. That was sorta in the slightly weak heavyweight division days, but still, he'd bring what he had, even a knockout by headkick etc...then once he was champion, he'd just box a little, and win decisions.
This is all seems to be intrinsic to the champion-challenger relationship of fight sports though. If you're not at the top, you need to go balls out, and take chances. Once there, you don't want to take chances, so play it safe.
I'll stop now, this will be a 1 hours convo when we hang next.
The only guy I hate more than GSP is Matt Hughes. In the fight you reference he claimed he was kicked in the nuts twice and GSP used that to set up the fake-leg go-high kick. Hughes said after getting kicked in the sprouts twice he instinctively flinched and that opened up the head kick for GSP.
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