Written by Jim Murphy
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Monday, August 11 2008
Georges St. Pierre defended his welterweight title and Brock Lesnar gave notice that he’s for real to highlight UFC 87: Seek and Destroy.
The last time that Georges St. Pierre defended his UFC welterweight title, it quickly turned into the low point of his career. Already facing a number of personal issues away from the cage, he looked sloppy and distracted as Matt Serra defeated him by brutal TKO. This time, things were different—before an enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd at Minneapolis’ Target Center arena GSP brutalized Jon Fitch over five rounds to win an easy unanimous decision. The judges’ scores of 50-43, 50-44, 50-44 underscored the one sided victory, though Jon Fitch showed a lot of heart and toughness to go the distance.
After a dominant takedown to open the fight, followed by a barrage of GSP punches it looked as if Fitch wouldn’t make it out of the first round. He managed to survive, though generated little offense the rest of the way as the champion had his way with him both on the ground and in standup striking exchanges. Fitch landed enough counterpunches to open a cut near the champion’s eye, but never even came close to winning a round. Fitch had to gut his way through another tough moment in the 4th, where a big knee followed by a flurry of kicks and punches had him on the verge of a TKO loss yet again. It may have been the champion’s strategy that saved him, as GSP decided to take Fitch down again rather than continue the striking onslaught as the round closed.
In the final round a game Fitch kept swinging for the fences at every opportunity, but the slick boxing skills of St-Pierre resulted in him getting the worst of his power punching efforts. After a couple of minutes, GSP took the fight to the ground and kept it there for the duration. Despite being beaten and battered, Fitch kept fighting—he kept looking for submission opportunities, but didn’t have the strength left to exploit a couple of apparent arm bar chances.
As the final horn sounded, GSP bowed down in front of Fitch in a nice, Muay Thai inspired show of respect. In yet another moment that is thankfully commonplace in fighting and all too rare in other sports, Fitch and GSP sat knee to knee in the center of the cage congratulating each other for over a minute as their respective cutmen worked on their wounds. The sportsmanship and mutual respect continued after the decision was announced, when Fitch embraced GSP and hoisted him into the air in celebration. To paraphrase HBO boxing announcer Jim Lampley “there is no sport like fighting, and there are no athletes like fighters.”
And there’s very likely not another athlete like Brock Lesnar even within the ranks of fightsport competitors. In his 3rd professional MMA bout the amateur wrestling legend turned WWE champion displayed a brutally effective new fighting style along with stellar patience and cage control as he obliterated tough and highly experienced Heath Herring. Lesnar received a thunderous ovation from his adopted home state as he entered the cage to the sounds of Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil” and quickly brought the crowd back to their feet within seconds of the opening horn as a powerful straight right sent Herring to the canvas.
From that point forward, Herring was completely out of the fight though he repeatedly demonstrated his toughness by staying in the fight and not “tapping out to strikes” as had Min Soo Kim in Lesnar’s MMA debut. Unlike Lesnar’s gameplan against Frank Mir in his UFC debut—when he clearly wanted to overwhelm his opponent for a quick win—perhaps the most impressive element of his improvement as a fighter was his patience. There were a number of occasions where Lesnar could have tried and finished the fight by placing himself at greater risk, but took the conservative approach. The result is a fight style that is almost frightening, with Lesnar able to leverage his world class ground control skills—along with his downright indefensible takedowns—to keep his opponent under control while he imposes his will using his size and strength and does damage with his massive hands and knees.
Overall, Lesnar’s performance bordered on “amazing”—a serious case could be made that he won all three rounds by 10-8 margins, though all three judges scored the fight 30-26. He repeatedly took down and threw around the 6’4” 250 Herring like he was a welterweight, and controlled the fight to such a degree that his opponent didn’t land more than a half dozen strikes during the entire fight—and none which were particularly effective. Boxing fans remember Floyd Mayweather’s historical domination of the late Diego Corrales, where “Chico” was so flustered by the “Pretty Boy’s” defensive mastery that his CompuBox connect rate never exceeded single digits in any round. Using his size, strength and wrestling skill Lesnar’s win over Herring was more one sided than Mayweather’s 10th round TKO win over Corrales. A few more metrics to put Lesnar’s dominance into perspective—Herring hasn’t been dominated to such a degree in his entire career which comprises 42 fights against opponents like Fedor Emelianenko, Vitor Belfort, Mirko Cro Cop and Antonio Rodgrio Nogueira.
Lesnar’s win gives a much needed boost to the UFC’s barren heavyweight division. While it may be premature to consider him a top 10 heavyweight, should Lesnar continue to develop and do such a good job of “fighting within his abilities” his potential in the sport is limitless.
In a highly anticipated matchup of lightweight contenders Kenny Florian used his superior technical striking skills and a disciplined and methodical approach to defeat Roger Huerta by unanimous decision. Huerta started the fight effectively, balancing his trademark aggressive style with effective counterpunching but as the round progressed Florian was able to take his opponent down and control him on the ground. The following two rounds were all Florian, as he took Huerta down repeatedly and kept his opponent off balance with his well rounded striking game. While all of the post main event hype focused on a potential matchup between Georges St. Pierre and BJ Penn at welterweight, Florian may be the next challenger for Penn’s lightweight title.
The opening bout of the evening provided a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu clinic as Damian Maia used his top flight skills to dominate a game Jason MacDonald. To his credit, MacDonald showed no fear of his opponent either standing or on the ground and repeatedly staved off submission attempts with sheer tenacity alone. Of course that’s something that’ll only work for so long against one of the most accomplished BJJ fighters in the world, and the end came when MacDonald tapped to a rear naked choke in the third round. Also on the card was a “blink-and-you’ll-miss it” fight between Rob Emerson and Manny Gamburyan. Judo black belt Gamburyan made the tactical error of rushing in throwing wild strikes, which Emerson countered perfectly sending his opponent to the canvas in route to a :12 second TKO win.
Overall, this was one of the better UFC cards top-to-bottom in some time. A lot of credit has to go to the live crowd at the Target Center, whose enthusiasm and appreciation for the more subtle aspects of the sport were repeatedly praised by the UFC announce team. The opening bout of the evening was a good indication of things to come, as the crowd was on its feet throughout a fight that consisted entirely of ground fighting and wildly cheered each submission attempt and counter. During the main event when the pace slowed during several points in the fight the crowd was intent and almost quiet—had one not known better they could have passed for an audience at the Saitama Super Arena in Tokyo. Easily one of the best live crowds in UFC, or for that matter American MMA, history.
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