FanHouse GeorgesSt Pierre

Firas Zahabi, the head MMA trainer at the Tristar Gym in Montreal, is quickly becoming one of the more respected coaches in MMA. Zahabi was once known primarily for being Georges St-Pierre's trainer but has recently added the likes of Jon Jones, Denis Kang and Kenny Florian to his impressive stable of fighters.

FanHouse spoke to Zahabi recently about the possibly of a St-Pierre fight against Anderson Silva, Florian leaving Team Sityodtong, and Jones' potential in the sport. Check out the full video interview below.

Prior to UFC 72, Martin Kampmann was on the verge of fighting Rich Franklin for a future shot at middleweight champion Anderson Silva. However, a knee injury forced him to withdraw from the bout. Since then, the 27-year-old worked his way up the welterweight division. He was supposed to fight Mike Swick at UFC 103 for a shot at current 170-pound champion Georges St-Pierre, but Swick pulled out late last week after suffering a concussion in training.

Kampmann (15-2) will now face UFC newcomer Paul Daley (21-8-2) on Sept. 19, but as he recently told FanHouse, no title shot will be on the line. Still, the Danish-born fighter, who most recently defeated Carlos Condit at UFC Fight Night 18 in April, is just excited to return to action. Check out the full interview below.

When I spoke to Forrest Griffin about his upcoming showdown against Anderson Silva at UFC 101 on Aug. 8, I got the sense that he wanted to talk about anything but that fight. Fine by me. The former UFC light heavyweight champion is one of the most personable and funny fighters in MMA.

Check out our interview below, where Griffin talks about everything from Kenny Powers to what he is looking forward to doing the most come Aug. 9. (Warning: explicit language below)

Here's the official promotional video for UFC 87:

The thing I like about the video -- and what I like about the UFC 87 card -- is that it features three different fights that should be big draws for the fans.

Georges St-Pierre is taking on Jon Fitch for the welterweight championship in the main event, and that should be the best 170-pound mixed martial arts fight of the year. Kenny Florian against Roger Huerta is a match-up of two of the top lightweights in the organization, not to mention two of UFC's most personable fighters. And having Brock Lesnar back in the Octagon will generate an extra 100,000 or so pay-per-view buys.

UFC 86 was basically a one-fight card, with the Forrest Griffin-Rampage Jackson main event getting all the promotion. UFC 85 didn't even have one big fight. But UFC 87 is stacked.

UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre is working on his jiu-jitsu in Brazil while he gets ready to fight Jon Fitch at UFC 87 in August, and he stopped for an interview on a Brazilian beach:

(Via Bloody Elbow)

Said St-Pierre on his thoughts about his opponent, "I think Jon Fitch is a very good fighter. I think I'm overall a better fighter than he is, and I'm going to have to come well prepared, otherwise it's going to be a bad night for me. But I think I'm pretty confident."

One of the best things ESPN.com does is post a lot of videos related to mixed martial arts. That's particularly surprising because ESPN doesn't televise MMA, and fans of other sports, especially hockey, have complained that ESPN simply ignores the sports it doesn't televise. But here it is, the latest ESPN MMA video, a rundown of the world's Top 10 pound-for-pound MMA fighters, according to Sherdog:

I think we've reached the point where it's obvious to anyone who follows the sport who the No. 1 fighter on the list is going to be, but what about positions 2-10? For those who don't feel like watching the video to find out, the list is after the jump.

Now that Georges St-Pierre has beaten Matt Serra and become the undisputed UFC welterweight champion, the question fans are asking is who he'll fight next.

The answer is most likely Jon Fitch, and that would be a fine fight. But UFC prides itself on putting together more than just "fine" fights -- UFC is supposed to be about giving its fans the best fights. And the best fight imaginable in the sport of mixed martial arts is St-Pierre against UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva.

The biggest obstacle is that it's just hard to see St-Pierre winning if he moved all the way up from welterweight (170 pounds) to middleweight (185). And Silva can't get down to 170 pounds. So they ought to meet at 180, a weight that Silva could reach safely if somewhat less comfortably and that St-Pierre could get up to and still be in top shape. They could call it the pound-for-pound title fight, and they could let both fighters keep their weight class belts when they moved back to their previous weight classes afterward.

That's a fight that should happen now because Silva is 33 and St-Pierre is 26. Silva won't be in his prime for much longer, so we can't wait a year or more. UFC has the two best fighters in MMA under contract and needs to put them in the Octagon together.

Georges St-Pierre beat Matt Serra for the UFC welterweight title at UFC 83 tonight, thrilling his hometown fans in Montreal with a dominant performance to avenge his knockout loss in 2007.

St-Pierre controlled the fight throughout and won by a second round TKO. Early on he effectively went for takedowns, and as the fight went on he increasingly landed solid strikes. The referee stopped the fight late in the second when they were on the ground and Serra had no answer for St-Pierre's strikes.

Serra entered the Octagon as the champion, although St-Pierre was technically the interim champion because Serra had been out of commission with a back injury. There is now no doubt; St-Pierre is the one and only champion of the welterweight division. Some will also consider him the best fighter in the sport of MMA regardless of weight class.

The crowd was a huge factor in the first UFC card ever in Canada; we noted the crowd as we live blogged both the main event and the undercard.

St-Pierre improves his professional mixed martial arts record to 16-2; Serra falls to 9-5.

UPDATE: UFC 83: Georges-St. Pierre Beats Matt Serra for Welterweight Championship

Welcome to the FanHouse live blog of the UFC 83 main event, featuring round-by-round and minute-by-minute updates of the Georges St-Pierre vs. Matt Serra welterweight title fight.

The undercard is over and the Serra vs. GSP main event will start a little after midnight Eastern. In the undercard, Rich Franklin beat Travis Lutter, Michael Bisping beat Charles McCarthy, Mac Danzig beat Mark Bocek and Nate Quarry beat Kalib Starnes.

Live, round-by-round updates of the Serra vs. St-Pierre main event begin after the jump.

This is the front page of today's edition of the Montreal newspaper La Presse.

With the French Canadian mixed martial arts star Georges St-Pierre headlining UFC 83 in Montreal today, the UFC is calling this a major opportunity to expand the sport north of the border. And it does seem to be catching on: The Bell Centre sold out quickly, and that's St-Pierre in the upper right corner of the front page of the paper. How many American papers have ever had an MMA fighter on their front page?

But it's also important to remember that these things are all relative, and that UFC doesn't get anywhere close to the attention of the Montreal Canadiens, as you can see on that front page. (Another major paper in Montreal gives major front-page play to the Canadiens but none at all to UFC.)

My friend Picard, the assistant program director at the Montreal sports radio station The Team 990, tells me, "the UFC up here is quite a huge deal. There's been a great buzz about it amongst the fight crowd and I think that this being the event city that it is, it's even bigger." But he adds, "the hype over the Canadiens is at least 50 times greater than that for the UFC."

We'll be live blogging UFC 83 here at FanHouse.