FanHouse Georges St. Pierre

The new Yahoo Top 10 pound-for-pound MMA poll was released today, and since I'm now one of the voters, I figured I'd let you know how I voted. Here's the ballot I submitted on Sunday:

1. Anderson Silva
2. Fedor Emelianenko
3. Miguel Torres
4. Georges St.-Pierre
5. B.J. Penn
6. Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
7. Lyoto Machida
8. Rashad Evans
9. Eddie Alvarez
10. Mike Brown

A few notes below.

Notes on a trip to Las Vegas.

In talking to fans and other reporters after UFC 84, there were two questions I kept hearing over and over: Which light heavyweight who fought that night will get the next shot at champion Quinton Rampage Jackson? And, Will lightweight champion B.J. Penn move up in class to fight welterweight champion Georges St.-Pierre?

Those are good questions, but aren't they overlooking something? Is everyone just assuming that Jackson will still be the champ after he fights Forrest Griffin at UFC 86, and that St.-Pierre will still be the champ after he fights Jon Fitch at UFC 87?

I think just about everyone is assuming that, and I'm not so sure that it's a wise assumption. Obviously, Jackson and St.-Pierre deserve to be the favorites, but it's not like Griffin and Fitch are pushovers. Griffin is coming off a very impressive victory over Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, who was the last person to beat Jackson. Fitch has won every fight he's been in for five years running.

So, although looking ahead to a Penn vs. St.-Pierre fight makes for fun speculation, and although there are about half a dozen UFC light heavyweights who could have great fights with Jackson, I wouldn't get too excited about those fights just yet. Griffin and Fitch will have something to say about this.

Rami Genauer of FightMetric.com has a great analysis of Georges St.-Pierre today at Yahoo Sports, and it serves as a reminder of just how ridiculously dominant St.-Pierre has been throughout his career.

FightMetric analyzes fights using something called Total Performance Rating, which is scored on a scale where a fighter who beats his opponent by a score of 100-0 would have fought a perfect fight, and a score of 60-40 or closer would be a good fight. St-Pierre has a professional mixed martial arts record of 15-2, and 14 of those 15 wins have been by a margin of greater than 60-40. (St-Pierre's only close win was against B.J. Penn.)

It's that dominance that makes St-Pierre such a huge favorite as he prepares to fight Matt Serra for the welterweight championship at UFC 83. We all remember St-Pierre destroying his opponents, Genauer's statistical analysis tells us that our memories are correct, and it just feels like no one could possibly beat St-Pierre.

But that gets back to Serra's complaints that everyone shortchanges him. After all, the FightMetric numbers say Serra dominated St-Pierre as much as St-Pierre dominates everyone else, landing 16 strikes to just four for St-Pierre before knocking St-Pierre out 3:25 into the first round.

This all brings us to the fundamental question of whether Serra's victory over St-Pierre was a one-time fluke or an achievement that Serra is likely to repeat. I'm predicting St-Pierre to win, and I'd pick him to win against any welterweight, because of the dominant career he's had. But Serra's great performance the first time they fought keeps me from making that prediction with much confidence.

Via Bloody Elbow come a couple of interesting videos showing Georges St.-Pierre and Matt Serra discussing their first fight, as well as their rematch, which will take place Saturday night at UFC 83. First up, St.-Pierre watches his knockout loss to Serra last year and explains what happened:

"I thought he wanted to bring the fight on the ground, so I was not expecting him trying to stand with me. Not at all," St.-Pierre said. "He caught me right behind the ear."

After the jump, Serra talks about the fight.

We're less than a week away from the Matt Serra-Georges St.-Pierre fight for the welterweight title at UFC 83, and that means it's time for some of the silly pre-fight smack talk.

One of the dumber things anyone has said in the lead-up to the fight came out of the mouth of Pete Sell, a UFC fighter who will be in Serra's corner Saturday night. In an interview with Fight Ticker, Sell had this to say about St.-Pierre:

He has all the tools to dominate but he is a mental midget -- his mentality is very weak. .... Matt Serra is all heart and GSP is the type of guy that if they were in a bar GSP would back down from a fight while Serra is down for whatever.

St.-Pierre had the exact right response to that in an interview with the Winnipeg Sun:

Of course I'm not going to fight in a club. It's just not my thing. If it doesn't involve me personally or my family, I will avoid it. I believe if you're a good person and treat people nicely, that incident wouldn't arise. I think those situations happen to people who are uncomfortable with themselves. Or try to look tough or act like fighters. You attract what you look like. I don't have anything to prove. When I fight, I do it for a living.

Comments like Sell's are the worst thing for the sport of mixed martial arts: They perpetuate the myth that fighting in the Octagon is no different from fighting in a bar. If Serra would look for a bar fight while St-Pierre would walk away, that's a good reason that mixed martial arts fans should cheer for St-Pierre.

UFC always does a great job using YouTube to promote its events, and the official promo video for UFC 83 is no exception:

The main event, Georges St.-Pierre against Matt Serra, is for the welterweight title, and it has the potential to be one of the fights that gets UFC attention among the mainstream sports media.

Dana White refers to UFC 83 as "the biggest UFC event ever." He means that mostly numerically; the crowd in Montreal is expected to be the biggest in UFC's history. But it will also be one of the biggest in terms of the interest it attracts among MMA fans, and among sports fans who are new to MMA.

Interim UFC welterweight champion Georges St.-Pierre will take on fellow welterweight champion Matt Serra in St.-Pierre's home town of Montreal in April.

Although UFC hasn't made the announcement official, Serra seems to be indicating that it's a go:

"I'm definitely up for that," he told The Canadian Press in an interview.

Serra's last fight was an upset of St. Pierre to win the title at UFC 69 in April of 2007. He was then scheduled to defend his title against Matt Hughes last weekend, but a back injury forced him to miss the fight. The UFC then put St.-Pierre in against Hughes for the interim title, and St.-Pierre won. Those odd circumstances give both Serra and St.-Pierre a legitimate claim to the title. They'll decide who the real champ is in April.

At UFC 79 tonight, Georges St.-Pierre dominated Matt Hughes from the start, punishing him for all of the first round and most of the second before Hughes finally tapped out.

The win makes St.-Pierre the interim UFC welterweight title holder, and guarantees that he'll fight former champion Matt Serra, who had been scheduled to take on Hughes tonight until an injury canceled that fight. Serra has been guaranteed a title shot. After the fight, St.-Pierre took off his title belt and said, "The real champion is Matt Serra," and that he will only consider himself the real champ when and if he beats Serra.

The win is a bit of an embarrassment for Hughes, who was totally outclassed throughout and looked somewhat unprepared, even though Hughes is the one who had more time to prepare for the fight. But Hughes, who verbally tapped out in the second round when St.-Pierre got him in an arm bar, said it best afterward: "Georges is just the better fighter."

Previously on FanHouse:
UFC 79 Live Blog: Georges St.-Pierre vs. Matt Hughes for Welterweight Championship
UFC 79: Chuck Liddell Beats Wanderlei Silva
UFC 79: Nemesis Live Blog -- Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva
With Couture Out, Tim Sylvia vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira for UFC Title
UFC 79 Undercard Live Blog: Machida- Sokoudjou, Clementi-Guillard, Sanchez-Palalei

This is the FanHouse live blog of the main event for tonight's UFC 79, featuring Matt Hughes taking on Georges St.-Pierre for the UFC interim welterweight title.

The undercard is over, and the Hughes vs. St.-Pierre main event should start a little after midnight Eastern.

You can follow along with live, round-by-round coverage of St.-Pierre vs. Hughes after the jump.

The mainstream sports media still, for the most part, dismisses mixed martial arts as somehow less than a legitimate sport. I think one reason for that is that people don't understand what phenomenal athletes the guys in UFC are. To get a taste of just what kind of training a UFC champion endures, check out Georges St.-Pierre demonstrating his training regimen:

St.-Pierre is every bit as dedicated to his craft as athletes in other sports are. Furthermore, the weight classes in sports like mixed martial arts and boxing typically demand those athletes to actually be better conditioned, all things considered, than athletes in other sports.

St.-Pierre will take on Matt Hughes for the UFC welterweight championship tonight at UFC 79. We'll be live blogging UFC 79 here at FanHouse.