UFC 129 was a true war theater of the absurd. A night of fantastic fights leading to a vexing main event that aroused more excitement before and after the fact than during.
Just when I thought nobody in his right mind would bear the agony of watching the champion Georges St-Pierre and his challenger Jake Shields plod for 25 minutes again, I was proven wrong.
As it turns out, it’s true that our ever-reliable MMA fight analysts don’t sleep on the job inside their respective Situation Rooms.
And that they actually bothered to rewind and do a frame-by-frame analysis of the fight video is what separates them from casual fans.
It didn’t take long before Internet sites showing photos and slow-motion replays of the alleged eye pokes propagated like mushrooms—courtesy of our techie fans, er, I mean fight scientists.
Now what makes the past fight interesting is the hot debate swirling around it post-fight.
Now the buzz zeros in to a matter of sight, precisely the loss of it by St-Pierre in his left eye in the second round.
Was it caused by an eye poke or a legit jab?
If it was an eye poke (or pokes), was it intentional or not?
And if it was intentional, was it the main tactic of Shields and his camp to take home the UFC Welterweight Title?
And just how much did it adversely affect the champion’s game plan?
Apparently, in the eyes of some fans, Shields’ integrity as a fighter is now verbally poked by accusations, while St-Pierre’s lackadaisical performance finds absolution.
“If only St-Pierre’s left eye didn’t go blind, he would’ve won in convincingly dominating fashion,” some think.
The MMA public is divided between those who opine that Shields fought with malice and those who give him the benefit of the doubt that his finger only accidentally twitched toward his opponent’s eye every time within touching distance.
Still, there are others who insist that only knuckles landed on St-Pierre’s face.
There are, as expected, contradicting in-depth readings of the fight video. Here are samples from the comments on my previous article UFC 129 Results: Expect a Quantum Leap in Jake Shields’ Stand-up Striking.
“GSP was poked at least five times. I can say with reasonable certainty that two were successful..three of the pokes definitely seemed intentional. One was a thumb-out jab. The other two were jabs in which he opened his hand at the end of its extension. It’s very unlikely that the latter two were clinch attempts as Shields was moving backwards.”
“It really is difficult to say if it was intentional or not. I would like to believe that it wasn’t, because he does seem like a decent guy…The only real way to tell is to cross-reference his previous fights to see if these kinds of strikes are a trend. If this is the first time, then I would say there is little doubt it was intentional.”
A dissenter claims that,”My inexpensive DVD recorder has from 4 x slow up to 64 x slow or frame by frame. The PUNCH that did the damage was from the small knuckle of Shields’s left jab, it went right into the eye once and landed mostly on the same eye all night.”
How do you see it?
If you’re asking me, I foresee Frankie Edgar successfully retaining his lightweight title on UFC 130.
UFC 129 Results, News and More
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