Many things have been said about Georges St-Pierre over his illustrious career. Among the most biting is that the UFC welterweight champion, arguably the greatest 170-pounder in MMA history, is a boring game planner.
That’s a reductive breakdown of GSP’s recent record of not having stopped anyone since BJ Penn’s corner threw in the towel in 2009. At UFC 158 on Saturday night in Montreal, we saw another GSP decision win against Nick Diaz.
But the fight can be described as anything but boring. It’s true, it wasn’t the most electric match on the fight card. Nevertheless, it did bring with it a spectacular display of GSP’s skills. Against a game opponent, GSP worked tirelessly until the final bell, staying busy on the ground and staying calm in the stand-up.
But like so many of his opponents, GSP was never going to finish Diaz. He never looked close to submitting him or knocking him out. And for many of the ill-educated MMA fans, no fight is considered worth watching unless one or the other of those things happens.
However, for a connoisseur of the sport, there is much to admire in GSP’s performance; a man whose raw athleticism and martial arts talent can utterly dominate someone considered as a serious challenger to his crown.
There is no doubt that, like all MMA athletes, GSP comes in with a strategy that he executes better than most. But to limit his ability to just game planning is to do him a disservice. What’s remarkable about GSP is the way he’s able to figure out and get on top of his opponent quickly, readjusting as necessary, and never letting go of his commanding role for the entire match.
He’s a man driven to dictating the terms of every contest, and that’s a remarkable thing to watch considering last Saturday he was fighting an opponent who loves to bully others in the cage.
It’s that resolute quality that has made him a dominant champion for the last five years.
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