After seeing Georges St-Pierre dominate round after round over the last four years, it’s easy to look down the roster and say that he’s pretty much unbeatable.
Because of that, we find ourselves doing nothing but waiting for Nick Diaz, because it seems so obvious that nobody in the UFC could possibly beat St-Pierre.
This is the wrong attitude to take. St-Pierre should be fighting more frequently, regardless of the lack of a true No. 1 contender.
Why They Fight ‘Em
Last weekend we saw top five welterweight Thiago Alves fall to defeat against the largely unheralded Rick “The Horror” Story.
Few people saw the upset coming, but the truth is that when fighters actually fight each other, these kinds of upsets happen with a higher frequency than you could possibly expect.
For years, Fedor Emelianenko was thought to be the greatest fighter of all time, and people assumed that he’d just keep winning.
What his doubters rightly said is that although Fedor had been undefeated for a long period of time, he hadn’t been fighting elite competition frequently.
Fabricio Werdum looked like the exact kind of fighter Emelianenko should beat up until Werdum triangle choked him in just over a minute.
One fight later, Fedor loses to Antonio Silva, a guy most people thought Fedor would easily knock out with faster and more dangerous striking, but Fedor lost decisively.
What we should take from Fedor’s decline is not that Fedor was overrated, but that when you fight frequently against top-level competition, there will be danger.
The same thing is true with Georges St-Pierre. It’s not about handpicking a tough opponent. Put him in enough fights and he’s going to find himself in some tough ones.
Dana White is often quoted as saying that UFC Champions fight the best of the best three times a year.
St-Pierre has fought the best, but he certainly hasn’t fought that frequently.
St-Pierre hasn’t even fought three times in a year since 2007, and given his current trajectory, 2011 won’t be any different.
Conclusion
St-Pierre doesn’t need to fight Anderson Silva to build his legacy. He just needs to keep on knocking down whoever the UFC puts in front of him, and if he does so, the knockouts and highlight-reel performances will come.
And if he loses, at least he went down fighting the best of the best three times a year.
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