This post is brought to you by TapouTVTC.com. Join TapouTVTC.com for the best MMA training and fitness on the internet.
St-Pierre wins despite early injury:
When Georges St-Pierre walked to the cage Saturday night, he was primed for a career-defining performance.
55,000 Canadians had packed the Rogers Centre for their champion, and had been treated to a card filled with highlight-reel finishes and exciting contests. Dogged by criticisms of his safety-first style, St-Pierre now had a chance to silence detractors against an opponent in Jake Shields that hadn’t been beaten since 2004.
This was St-Pierre’s moment to shine.
Unfortunately, things do not always go as planned. St-Pierre took a decision victory that –while never in doubt — was hardly the sendoff that a card like UFC 129 deserved.
Make no mistake, though, this is not an indictment of St-Pierre. An eye poke in the third round left the champion blind in the left eye, and it clearly affected the champion’s performance. With his vision limited, St-Pierre sat behind his newly-discovered jab, occasionally mixing in a looping overhand right but never causing enough damage to seriously threaten a finish. When St-Pierre did mix up his striking in the form of a switch head kick, he planted Shields to the mat, but was not able to follow up with any substantial punishment on the ground.
Perhaps due to the injury, Shields was able to hang in the standup game, even taking two rounds from St-Pierre on two of the judges’ scorecards. For Shields to actually win the match, however, he needed to get the fight to the ground and utilize his American jiu-jitsu, and it became clear early that St-Pierre’s takedown defense was going to be too much for the Cesar Gracie product. And whether it was a product of his earlier takedowns getting stuffed, a perceived advantage on the feet with an opponent fighting with one eye, or a combination of the two, Shields did not attempt a takedown in a fifth round where he needed a finish to win the title.
Of course, the criticism leveled at St-Pierre for his inability to finish this fight has been significantly overblown. Critics would do well to remember that Shield had not been finished in a fight since 2000, in what was his third professional fight. It might not have been the exciting finish that fans had been hoping for, but at the end of the day, St-Pierre has now defended his welterweight title six consecutive times, and credible challengers at 170 lbs. are becoming fewer and far between.
Aldo wins, but Hominick shines:
St-Pierre was not the only champion to look vulnerable Saturday, as featherweight titleholder Jose Aldo gritted through a five round war against the tough-as-nails Mark Hominick in the night’s co-main event.
Aldo looked sluggish on the feet from the second round on, and was positively drained by the fifth. It was speculated during the fight that this was due to a difficult weight cut, but reports are now trickling out that Aldo was actually suffering from some sort of illness.
Despite those obstacles, Aldo was still able to deliver a significant amount of punishment to Hominick, including a hematoma on Hominick’s forehead that would have caused some athletic commissions to stop the fight.
And yet in defeat, Hominick was the most impressive fighter of the four men on the top of the card Saturday. He stormed back in the fifth round, putting Aldo on his back and raining down unanswered shots for much of the round.
He may not have won the belt, but Hominick put on a performance to make his Canadian fans proud. Hopefully a Fight-of-the-Night bonus will help pay for some ice for his forehead.
Odds and Ends:
- Is Steven Seagal really becoming a force in mixed martial arts? Anderson Silva’s crediting of Seagal for his first-round front kick knockout of Vitor Belfort was largely written off by fans and analysts, but you can now add Lyoto Machida to the growing list of front kick finishes in the UFC. Machida looked much quicker than Randy Couture, moving away and delivering powerful shots at will while never letting Couture get a hold of him. And then in the second round, Machida unleashed a jumping crane kick that sent Couture tumbling to the mat and into retirement. After never having seen a front kick knockout in the UFC, we have had two in the last three months. That has to be more than coincidence, right?
- If this really is the end for Randy Couture, we should pay tribute to one of the true MMA greats. His 19-11 record does not properly capture the numerous ways that he impacted the sport, or the feeling of watching him square off against the likes of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. You will be missed Randy, enjoy a well-earned retirement.
- Vladimir Matyushenko’s work with Antoni Hardonk paid dividends in the form of a 20-second dismantling of Jason Brilz. You have to credit a fighter who, at 40 years old, is still willing to evolve and improve his game, rather than coasting on what got him this far.
- Rory MacDonald continues to be one of the UFC’s most exciting prospects, rebounding from the first loss of his career with a dominant decision win over Nate Diaz. Diaz looked to be at a significant size and strength disadvantage, and wound up on the wrong end of three suplexes as a result. Still just 21, MacDonald could ensure that the UFC welterweight title remains in the hands of a Canadian for years to come.
Cameron Gidari is the official writer for TapouTVTC.com. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/GidariTapouTVTC
