Dana White on the Best outside the UFC and GSP talks his toughest Tests

UFC 129: Will Georges St. Pierre be Vacating Welterweight Title to Fight Anderson Silva?

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Rumors of an eventual clash between UFC kingpins Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva are picking up, as the two fighters head into what will likely be their final title defenses before the dream bout.

Georges St. Pierre, the current UFC Welterweight champion, has completely dominated the division since winning back his title from Matt Serra in April 2008. Title defenses against Jon Fitch, B.J. Penn, Thiago Alves, Dan Hardy and most recently Josh Koscheck have looked like a walk in the park for the machine known as “GSP.”

While the UFC employs anywhere from seven to eight of the top 10 welterweights in the world, the division looks bare due to the complete control that St. Pierre has on top.

The only real fight remaining for St. Pierre, at 170 pounds within the UFC, is against former EliteXC Welterweight champion Jake Shields, which will happen at UFC 129 in April.

Shields has spent much of his recent career fighting at 185 pounds, but he has won 15 straight fights dating back to his last loss in December 2004.

The streak includes wins over a plethora of the world’s top fighters including Yushin Okami, Carlos Condit, Paul Daley, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, Robbie Lawler and Dan Henderson. He also won his UFC debut over consensus top-10 welterweight Martin Kampmann in October 2010, albeit in less than spectacular fashion.



Even given Shields’ impressive track record, George St. Pierre remains a massive betting favorite (-600) for the fight. Simply put, odds-makers have determined that St. Pierre is so dominant that even against the man who may be the second best welterweight in the world; he is still a six-to-one favorite.

Just imagine how much of a favorite he’d be against lesser competition.

If the defending champion does what everyone expects him to do to Jake Shields, the UFC welterweight division goes back to looking like an abandoned wasteland, despite being filled with some of the world’s best fighters.

At this point, it seems that the only competition that St. Pierre truly has is if he moves up 15 pounds to fight at the 185 pound middleweight division.

Fellow pound-for-pound king Anderson Silva has been on a similar, perhaps even more dominant run since his UFC debut in June 2006. “The Spider” has utterly deflated the division as the UFC Middleweight champion, leading many to believe that his only real threat to his undefeated UFC record may be in other weight classes.

Silva himself faces perhaps the toughest competition of his career this Saturday, when he defends his title against Vitor Belfort.

According to Dana White’s interview with Fightline.com last week, if Silva and St. Pierre win their next fights, the UFC is planning to move St. Pierre up to 185 pounds. The move would, of course, setup the dream fight between the world’s top two pound-for-pound fighters.

"If (Silva) wins that fight on the fifth, then Georges St-Pierre needs to beat Jake Shields in Toronto," White said. "If that happens, then we're probably going to do that fight. If they both win, that fight makes all the sense in the world."

Even more surprisingly, White also confirmed that if St. Pierre does make the move up to 185 pounds, he will stay at that weight for the foreseeable future.

"Georges St-Pierre said he would move to 185 and stay there, he would stay at that weight and not go back to 170," White said.

If what the UFC President said is true, then we have to assume that St. Pierre will not only make a run at winning the Middleweight title, but that he will also be vacating his Welterweight title.
After all, the UFC can’t afford to have a division where there is not a defending champion.

We’ve seen interim UFC champions in the past when the existing champion is injured but this would be an entirely different set of circumstances. St. Pierre’s move to 185 pounds would be permanent and he would not be returning to defend his title against an interim champion.

Of course, this news must be music to the ears of fellow welterweight contenders such as AKA’s Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck, Thiago Alves, Matt Hughes, Dan Hardy and B.J. Penn—all of whom have been unable to get their hands on the belt since St. Pierre’s dominance began.

If St. Pierre does make the move to 185 pounds, perhaps the UFC will consider doing what Strikeforce is currently doing with their heavyweight division and create a tournament to determine a new champion (although Strikeforce’s tournament is just to determine a No. 1 contender to face current champion Alistair Overeem).

But before we get ahead of ourselves in looking forward to the dream fight between St. Pierre and Silva, each man must take care of business in their upcoming fights.

At that point, we can really start to look at the historical matchup between the two and what will happen to the UFC welterweight division in the future.

A Toast for the D-Bag: Here's to you, Mr. Koscheck

By Elton Hobson


Let’s have a toast for the d*****bags, let’s have a toast for the a**holes, let’s have a toast for the scumbags, every one of them that I know. Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs, thatll never take work off.
For those of you that can’t stand him, I apologize for sullying a good MMA discussion with a Kanye West song. That said, I felt like the rapper’s latest hit/mea culpa/excercise in self-indulgence is particularly appropriate after last night’s UFC 124 main event.
And of course, I’m talking about MMA’s premier D-bag: Josh Koscheck.
After months of trash talk, over the top boasting, reality TV hijinks, male nurse bashing and borderline homoerotic comments had everyone hyped to the nines, the welterweight title fight between Georges St. Pierre and Josh Koscheck proved to be horrendously one sided.
For 25 minutes, St. Pierre teed off on the challengers face almost at will. He broke Koscheck’s orbital bone, avoided any damage in return, and put on a clinic of jabs, hooks, leg kicks and Superman punches. Aside from a brief take down, Koscheck had nothing to offer GSP.

Post-fight analyses have been a slew of congratulatory sentiments for GSP across the board, with many calling him perhaps the greatest fighter in Mixed Martial Arts today. And yet, in the midst of this “rush” to heap praise on GSP (see what I did there?), I can’t help but to offer a tip of my hat to Josh Koscheck.
Yes, I want to praise Josh Koscheck – the man dominated so totally and so completely that he may never again receive another shot at the title.
For the 23,000 fans in attendance, this fight was everything you could have asked for: 5 rounds of the hometown good guy trouncing possibly the sport’s biggest villain. Everyone who was in attendance that night had a great time.
I know, because I was one of them.
I’ve beat this drum before, but there’s nothing like a GSP fight in Montreal. No fighter in MMA – bar none – commands fan energy and adulation in their hometown like Mr. St. Pierre does in Montreal. The crowd was white-hot from the opening bell to the final decision, screaming, chanting, and cheering like the drunken Canadian lunatics we were. Think a World Cup final, crossed with a group therapy session, bred with one of those crazy deep-South revivals.
And of course, we booed the living sh*t out of Josh Koscheck.
I didn’t, though. Honest. I clapped politely when he entered the Bell Centre, while around me people booed, flipped him the bird, and showered him with sentiments they probably wouldn’t want repeated in front of their mothers – except that it was a GSP fight, meaning their mothers were likely there as well, booing and cursing right along with them.
I also didn’t partake in the “F*ck You Koscheck!” chant, which I thought was in particularly bad taste. For Pete’s sake, he’s already getting the living crap beat out of him in front of thousands of people. Isn’t that enough? Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.
Not trying to be a snob here – Kos certainly did everything he could to earn those boos, after all. If you jeered him, I certainly don’t blame you. For my part, I think being GSP’d is a bad enough fate for any man.
And what a GSP’ing it was. Yet amid the absolute adrenaline rush of watching perhaps the best all-around martial artist on planet Earth do his thing, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for Koscheck.
The man had clearly done his homework. In their first fight, Kos was thoroughly out-wrestled by GSP, and he was clearly determined to avoid that fate the second time around. In that regard, he largely succeeded. He stuffed most of St. Pierre’s take downs, and even managed one of his own in the first round. Amid all the adulation being heaped on GSP, the fact that his wrestling game was largely stifled has been entirely overlooked.
That’s probably because it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Kos kept the fight on the feet, where GSP battered him almost at will, picking him apart with a technical perfection rarely seen in MMA. An early victim of this fight was Kos’s orbital bone, shattered by a St. Pierre jab. With each passing minute, the swelling on his face got worse; Koscheck’s vision was further diminished and St. Pierre continued to hone in on the break with hooks and head kicks.
From the 3rd round onwards, and arguably sooner then that, Kos was a desperate man, a broken fighter – looking not to prevail, but simply to survive.
Kos trained hard for this fight for months. He showed up in shape, and with a game plan that gave him the best possible chance of victory. Kos gave months of his life in training, gave this fight everything he had, and what does he gave to show for it? A broken orbital bone, a bloodied face, months of rehab ahead of him, and zero chance of another title shot so long as St. Pierre holds the title.
All he can say is that he went the distance. That he was defeated, but he was never beaten. For a fighter as competitive as Kos, that must be a bitter pill to swallow.
Yet he should hold his head up high. If nothing else, Kos proved what a tough SOB he really is. He fought almost 5 full rounds with a broken bone in his face, barely able to see. He could have quit at any point. When the ringside doctor checked on him after the 3rd round, he could easily have taken that “out” and stop the beating with no damage to his pride.
But he didn’t. He stayed in there, took the best shots GSP had to give him, and never stopped trying to win the fight, even while 23,000 people jeered and taunted him.
I hope fans remember the true display of heart and grit Koscheck put on Saturday night. I hope that even amidst the scorn and the ridicule, fans aknowledge what a mentally strong fighter Kos really is. So long derided for being a “princess”, faking injuries and fouls with regularity, Koscheck proved beyond all doubt that in the realm of mental fortitude, Koscheck is truly unshakable.
Most of all, I hope Koscheck can show this fight to his kids and grand kids one day, and do so with pride. For 25 minutes, he danced under those lights with the absolute best in the world, took everything he had to offer, and never backed down. Most people will go their whole lives never knowing if they measure up to greatness. Koscheck no longer has this uncertainty.
So Kos, here’s to ya. Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of you at the sports elite level. You’ve earned that much.