This past Thursday UFC, and FOX Sports announces its agreement that will take mix martial arts to another level in the next 7 years. For this major milestone the UFC had its top fighters at the press conference, and one of them was defending welterweight champion George St Pierre. He will defend that title against current "Strikeforce Welterweight champ Nick Diaz that will take place in Oct at UFC 137. Being at the press conference gave media reporters opportunity ask GSP questions about his opponent Nick Diaz, and on that same day "Full Contact Fighter" interviewed Nick Diaz's manager Cesar Gracie. He believes that GSP stalls fights, and as a fight fan he is not a fan of that.
As a fan of mix martial art reading Gracie's statement of GSP having a boring style could have a lot of meaning into it, and one way it comes across to me is it could be playing mind games. We see so much of the physical battles of the sport that we forget about mind games that play just as much of a factor, if not more.Why I see Gracie's statement as away of playing mind games with GSP is that it is a huge fight for his fighter Nick Diaz, and He is looking for whatever potential advantage He can get against GSP.
I think Gracie thinks that playing mind games with GSP will be advantage for Diaz, because he try set up GSP to over commit an attack on Nick Diaz to be in the position for him to be knocked out. Some fighters feel that GSP's weakness is not having a great chin, because of his knockout from Matt Sierra that was his last loss. That is why I think Gracie is playing mind games with GSP, and question is will it pay off?
That's a hard question to answer, because of GSP being so dominate in the last 4 years. 2007 was the last lost GSP had, and since than he was won 9 fights. In those nine fights he has been into 7 title fights, and 6 of those have been title defense. He is with out of doubt the greatest welterweight of all time, because he has pretty much defeated the who's who of the welterweights. Each of his 22 wins have come against fighters with different strengths to put him at a disadvantage, but GSP being one of the most complete fighters has execute game plans to take away their strengths to put him in positions to win the fights. His down point throughout his dominance is that he does not finish fights, but neither did Randy Couture that is in the UFC hall of fame. Him not finishing fights is another way to see his dominance. Since 2007 GSP has fought 36 rounds, and has only lost about 3 rounds. In his last fight against Shields he lost two of the three, but before that it was four years since he lost his last round. From that people can argue that GSP does not finish fights, but what does that say for his opponents that claim to be the ones to finish GSP? After they fought GSP they all combined have an average finish.
From UFC 74 to UFC 129 there are only three fighters to be consider finishers. They are Koscheck, Penn, and Hughes. Some of his the other opponents like Fitch who's last finish via submission was in 2007, Thiago Silva, and Hardy have not had finishes since fighting GSP. These are all welterweights, and their division being one of the toughest could also be a reason why GSP has not finish his fights.
In October at UFC 137 Diaz will have an opportunity to slow down GSP's dominance, and does he have that ability? He's got good stand up, great jiujitsu, and insane cardio. But will that be enough to force pressure on GSP to make him fight, and also create bad spots for GSP? One area Diaz does have questions in is his takedown defense, and will it be enough to limit amount of times GSP taking him down? These questions will be answer at UFC 137 when the talking will end, and the fight will answer these questions
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