Tag: Johny Hendricks

Although Georges St-Pierre walked away from UFC 167 wearing gold, there aren’t a lot of people in the MMA world who agree that he should be UFC champion.

Johny Hendricks landed a slew of powerful punches and badly damaged St-Pierre’s face in Saturday’s  headliner. Looking at the FightMetric stats, St-Pierre actually landed more significant strikes, but Hendricks landed more total strikes.

Both men connected on half of their takedowns attempted, but St-Pierre narrowly took the edge with one more takedown than Hendricks. GSP also added two submission attempts.

Obviously, the fight was pretty close, but how did the champ manage to edge Hendricks on the scorecards?

St-Pierre attempted to get his striking arsenal going by using the jab early on. It’s a weapon that’s served him well in the past, with the win over Josh Koscheck at UFC 124 being GSP‘s best showcase of his jab.

St-Pierre used the punch to halt Hendricks’ offense at times but also used it to negate one of Hendricks’ biggest advantages—his ability to cover space. Coming into the fight, the knock on Hendricks was that he wasn’t technically sound but could cover a wide amount of space with his powerful punches.

As effective as the jab had been for St-Pierre in the past, it simply wasn’t on par with his past performances at UFC 167. Instead St-Pierre had to rely on another attribute that’s improved tenfold since GSP began his UFC career, his footwork.

If you read any article by Jack Slack, you’ll notice one of his common themes is proper footwork. It’s a skill that can often cover up a fighter’s deficiencies or highlight his or her strengths. For St-Pierre, it’s more of the latter, as his footwork allowed St-Pierre to avoid falling victim to the sledgehammer of a left hand from Hendricks.

True, Hendricks was able to land his power shots and some nice ground-and-pound, but he wasn’t able to string together multiple shots. Hendricks may have been able to do more than just rock St-Pierre if he were able to land consecutive power shots, but St-Pierre did well to avoid finding himself in that predicament.

A final area that helped St-Pierre was his ability to finish the fight with an exclamation point. The fight was tight going into the fifth round and St-Pierre took advantage of Hendricks coasting a bit in the final frame.

The fight was razor close, and I believe if St-Pierre doesn’t step away from the sport, we will get to see GSP-Hendricks II and put all these questions of who’s better to rest once and for all.

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Heading into UFC 167’s main event between Georges St-Pierre and Johny Hendricks, arguably the most prominent talking point surrounded the question of which fighter would hold the wrestling advantage.

While St-Pierre has long been considered the most dominant wrestler in the sport, in Hendricks, he was facing a man who had been on the mats since the age of five, who had earned two division one national titles at Oklahoma State and was seconds away from winning a third.

But we had seen this storyline play out before, or so we thought. In his two fights against Josh Koscheck—a national champion in his own right—GSP was able to dictate the terms of the fight for the most part.

The most prohibitive feature of the 32-year-old’s game has always been his ability to keep opponents guessing, changing levels and timing his shots with Swiss precision.

As Hendricks and St-Pierre met in the center of the cage, it looked as though we were in for more of the same. Within seconds of the opening bell, the long-time welterweight king had put “Bigg Rigg” on his back.

But almost as quickly as he went down, Hendricks scrambled to his feet and began his assault on St-Pierre.

It didn’t take long for the challenger to make a statement of his own, controlling the clinch game against the cage and dumping GSP to the mat.

The champion climbed to his feet, but these early exchanges set the tone for the rest of the fight. GSP was visibly discouraged, as Hendricks continued to shrug off several more takedown attempts.

More than just a moral victory, the challenger’s ability to dictate the terms of the fight robbed St-Pierre of his biggest strength.

In the rounds that followed, the champion all but abandoned any hope of taking Hendricks down. He was forced to compete in a straight kickboxing match.

The Canadian’s striking is ordinarily given the freedom to shine because of his wrestling. The constant threat of the takedown inspires hesitancy in his opponents, making even the most gung-ho of fighters gun-shy.

Without this seed of doubt, the puzzle of St-Pierre suddenly becomes soluble.

Hendricks was able work GSP over with his powerful striking, unfettered by the fear of being taken down, while continuing to control the fight whenever the pair clinched up.

The challenger succeeded in scoring another takedown in Round 4, keeping St-Pierre on his back and busting him open with some nasty ground and pound.

As if to add insult to injury, Hendricks hopped out of the champion’s guard voluntarily and allowed him to get to his feet.

Whether it was a tactical decision or purely mind games, it had the effect of reinforcing Bigg Rigg’s dominance to the viewers. Well, to almost every viewer besides two of the three that mattered: the judges.

Hendricks may not have officially beaten St-Pierre, and most of the contest took place on the feet, but make no mistake, his wrestling was responsible for him “winning” the fight.

Should GSP reconsider his decision to step away from the sport, the wrestling storyline and how it develops will be central to the outcome of any rematch.

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