MMA Training

Originally posted on Bloody Elbow.com

"FightMetric released their report for Georgest St. Pierre's domniance over Dan Hardy at UFC 111.  In
the victory, St. Pierre reached new highs and-and a disturbing low:

While St. Pierre was unable to finish
Hardy, the grappling clinic he put on set three new career highs for
GSP:

11 takedowns landed (previous high, 10 vs.
Alves)
6 submission attempts (previous high, 5 vs.
Koscheck)
26 positional improvements (previous high, 14
vs. Miller)

Less impressive was the total number of
heavy strikes landed by GSP. After landing a career-high 106 HiPer
Strikes against Jon Fitch, St. Pierre's striking tally has declined in
each of his last three fights:

49 vs. Penn (in four
rounds)
41 vs. Alves
35 vs. Hardy

If Luke Thomas took the "glass is half-empty view" and Brent Brookhouse the "half-full view", I guess that leaves the "glass has
water in it" view to me.  St-Pierre couldn't put away an outmatched
opponent, but is that really that surprising?  Georges has never shown
preternatural one strike power, eliminating any kind of notion that he
could put Hardy away toe-to-toe.  And while he has impressive submission
victories in the past, he's no Demian Maia or B.J. Penn either.

If Luke Thomas took the “glass is half-empty view” and Brent
Brookhouse the “half-full” view, I guess that leaves the “glass has
water in it” view to me.

Brent made the analogy that B.J. Penn is to Manny Pacquiao as Georges
St-Pierre is to Floyd Mayweather.  It's not exactly the most eloquent
comparison, but I agree with it in at least one aspect: a dominating win
is a dominating win whether it ends in a finish or not.  Mayweather
gets flack for his defensive style of boxing, but the fact is that he
makes other professional athletes look like children in the ring with
him.  The same holds true for St-Pierre.

It's not as if his opponents don't know what to expect either.  They
know that Georges might stand in front of them for awhile, but it's just
a matter of time before he breaks out the wrasslin'.  Yet, there's
nothing they can do to contain it, let alone stop it completely."    

I don't see any difference between St Pierre's last two fights and Anderson Silva's fight against Thales Leites.  In those three matches, the champion's opponent had only one way to win…St. Pierre put two competent strikers on their backs and used positional control to win.  I don't feel that it's necessarily his job to make the fight "entertaining" by putting himself at risk in his opponent's only offensive edge.  The onus was on Hardy to find a way to stay on his feet long enough to deliver the knockout punch, but after the first round, I don't think he had it in him.  Anyone else have thoughts on the comparisons being made between St. Pierre and Mayweather?

I'm going to have to take the opposite side of the argument on this one and put it this way: When Matt Serra caught GSP, everyone said it was a "lucky" punch (if he was aiming for his head, I'd call it anything but lucky) and that's pretty much the norm for when someone gets caught earliy in a fight.  Now look at the opposite end of the spectrum…GSP dominated Hardy for a full 25 minutes.  That's got to be pretty humbling to be on the receiving end of something like that.  Hardy unable to mount any significant offense or cause any effective damge, I'd say that this fight was just as dominant as Anderson Silva's victory over Forrest Griffin.  The fact that the majority of it took place on the ground may shade the victory in some people's eyes, but a clearly dominant win IMO is a clearly dominant win…The comparison between Mayweather and GSP is a little unfair in my view…boxing is to checkers as MMA is to chess.  There are just too many ways to win to say that GSP's style is simply "smothering" or "lay and pray"…using incremental advances and winning the match by positional dominance was the gameplan and it was very effectively executed.