While there still may be a little unfinished business for the two of them in their respective divisions, Dana White has recently admitted that a superfight between Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre may very well be on the horizon.
Georges St-Pierre has many of the qualities that one may need to dethrone the current middleweight king. Silva has struggled with strong wrestlers and people that have been able to take him down such as Dan Henderson, Travis Lutter, and Chael Sonnen. GSP possesses incredibly strong wrestling skills and certainly has the ability to take Silva to the mat. He also has very good top control and wouldn’t make the mistakes Lutter and Sonnen did that led to fight-ending submissions.
While it is very unwise for anyone to stand and trade with Silva, GSP does have a good stand-up game and has the ability to string together nice combinations and mix up his attacks. He is also very technically sound, which would help him from getting caught.
So even though GSP does not have the power to take out Silva, Silva would at least have to respect St-Pierre’s striking, which is huge.
St-Pierre would be able to set up his takedowns with strikes, so he doesn’t have to shoot from so far out. He would just have to be careful to not gain a false sense of security on his feet.
If Chael Sonnen wasn’t able to put Silva away, then it’s unlikely that very many people could.
St-Pierre also brings elements that Silva hasn’t had to deal with. GSP has the speed, explosiveness, and athleticism that some of the middleweights and light heavyweights that Silva’s fought do not possess.
With all that being said, however, it is very likely that GSP has lost this fight before it’s even started.
Even with all of his physical abilities, St-Pierre’s greatest asset and tool is his mind. He has the incredible ability to fight with his brain and stick to a game plan. He doesn’t get lulled into other people’s traps or tricks, and does not fight off of emotion.
But when doubt starts to set in, he becomes very human and begins to break down.
When asked about moving up to 185 to fight Anderson, he tends to avoid the question, and you can see the nervousness start to show in his face. Then, the excuses begin to flow like a river about how he would need time to add a lot of weight and how it would be a whole reorientation of his career. One can see that he does not feel incredibly confident in his ability to move up and be successful.
This lack of confidence and mental weakness also shows itself in his fights when he gets into trouble.
At UFC 129, when his eye got damaged by Jake Shields, he became very rattled and seemed to lose a lot of confidence. When listening to the conversation between him and Greg Jackson in between rounds, one could tell that he was very disturbed. Jackson had to basically force him to go back out for the final rounds. He was very shaken by the eye injury and did not look the same.
This is very different than the GSP we saw a few years ago. Even in his first fight against Penn he worked his way through a broken nose and a damaged eye to come back and win.
It seems that GSP may be a front-runner whose success is based off how he’s feeling mentally. In the Matt Serra fight, he wasn’t mentally prepared and got brutally knocked out.
So while GSP may possess the physical tools necessary to beat Silva, he may have already lost due to mental weakness and a lack of confidence.
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