How do you come back from a fight in which you (along with nearly everyone in the MMA world) felt you’d beaten the pound-for-pound best in MMA?
That’s a question Johny Hendricks and his team will have to focus on for his next outing in the Octagon.
Arguably, Hendricks did enough to take the UFC title away from Georges St-Pierre, but in the end, GSP retained his title by split-decision. It’s hard to pinpoint where and when Hendricks lost the fight on the judges’ scorecards as both he and GSP were nearly even across the board in terms of statistics.
However, if you had to point out one moment where Hendricks lost the fight, it’d have to be the fifth and final round.
Just as in the individual rounds themselves, finishing strong at the end can often sway the judges’ minds on the scorecards. We’ve seen a number of fighters attempt to “steal a round” by coming on strong at the end with either a flurry of strikes or a takedown.
This happened to Hendricks as St-Pierre closed out the fight by taking the final round. If you run with the thought that GSP and Hendricks were neck and neck heading into the final round, then St-Pierre did enough to take home the victory by winning the final round.
The FightMetric stats will back that thought as St-Pierre landed more significant strikes and threw more strikes overall. St-Pierre also landed two takedowns in the round.
The stats for the final round were St-Pierre landing nine of his 26 significant strikes, 13 of his 20 total strikes and two takedowns from four attempts. Conversely Hendricks was able to only land four of his 10 significant strikes with 15 total strikes landed out of 21 overall. He also failed to score a takedown.
In a title fight, one of the most tired clichés is “to be the champ, you have to beat the champ.” Normally it’s just a line given by people to support the champion winning by a small margin. In this case however, Hendricks inability to close out the fight with a win in round five likely cost him the fight.
The fight was so closely contested that a decisive final round was needed by both men. Just check out the official scorecards of the three judges for UFC 167 in which two of the judges who scored the fight for St-Pierre had the fight even at two rounds a piece heading into the final round.
The FightMetric numbers tell a similar story with the only round that was clearly won by either fighter (according to the stats) was the third round in which GSP landed double the significant strikes (31 to Hendricks’ 15) and out-struck Hendricks by 10 strikes.
Of course, FightMetric also scored the fight a win for Hendricks; so it’s anyone’s guess as to who should’ve won the fight. Although fans will disagree on the winner, I believe we can all agree that it’s a fight we all want to see again.
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