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Former UFC two-division champion Georges St-Pierre gives his take on the upcoming UFC 246 headliner between Conor McGregor and Donald Cerrone.
Former UFC two-division champion Georges St-Pierre gave his take on the upcoming UFC 246 headliner between Georges St-Pierre and Donald Cerrone. While he did not pick a clear winner, he did break the fight down the way he sees it happening.
“If it’s a quick fight it’s going to be McGregor. If it’s a long fight it’s going to be Cerrone,” St-Pierre said in a recent video uploaded on the Tristar Gym YouTube channel (transcript by BJPenn.com).
“[It] depends if Cerrone comes and tries to grapple because he has a very good ground game, his ground game is very underrated,” he explained. “I’ve trained with him before, he has good takedown. He is very explosive to shoot the takedown.
“People don’t know that because he doesn’t use it much. He used it against Patrick Cote. If he does that, to weather the first couple minutes of the storm and McGregor’s powerful left hand, I think he can get it.”
Based on his own experience, St-Pierre is slightly leaning towards “Cowboy” when it comes to wrestling. But if it turns into a stand-up battle, he is looking at McGregor to score a knockout.
“I think if he wrestles in round one he has a good chance to win,” he said. “But, if he tries to play a boxing and karate game with McGregor, McGregor will knock him out… It’s hard. The odds are more towards McGregor. Cerrone can pull this off too. It’s at 170, [it’s] Cerrone [advantage] I think.
“McGregor looks big. I don’t know enough about McGregor,” he continued. “But, from what I’ve seen is he is like a sniper. When you fight a sniper, you need to move, you need change levels, you need change angles, change [the] distance and I don’t know if Cerrone will do that. He is known to be a slow starter as usual, so if he doesn’t start right away hard with the speed he is going to get caught.”
UFC 246 takes place on January 18th in Las Vegas.