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UFC 79: Nemesis
Saturday December 29 9:00PM (EST)
Georges St Pierre vs. Matt Hughes
St Pierre -215
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This will be the rubber match in this great mixed martial arts trilogy. Georges St. Pierre (14-2) is taking this fight with only a months notice and this is a crucial fight for him. Him, and Matt Hughes (41-5) will be fighting for the UFC interim welterweight title until Matt Serra becomes healthy again.
If St Pierre loses, he will be sent down the welterweight pecking order and have to wait in line behind a number of top level fighters like BJ Penn, Karo Parisyan, Jon Fitch, Josh Kosheck and Diego Sanchez. This is a very important fight and UFC President Dana White asked a number of fighters if they wanted the title shot (like Jon Fitch) but it was only GSP that would take it on short notice.
GSP is well aware of this, and he is known to be a gym rat and is constantly training, so he will not need a lot of time to prepare for this fight. Since he has faced Hughes twice already at UFC 65: Bad Intentions and at UFC 50: The War of '04, there will be no surprises for him. Conversely Hughes has been preparing for BJJ fighter, now he will have to change his game plan to fight St Pierre.
St Pierre is a much bigger, and stronger fighter and technically has much better submissions than Hughes. In the past, Hughes has been able to dominate much bigger fighters and by using his freakish strength to overpower fighters. Either it is age or wear and tear of his body, but Hughes is not the same dominate fighter he was 5 years ago. He has better wrestling skills than St. Pierre, but since GSP has a bigger body frame, Hughes’ wrestling skills are not as overpowering as in his past fights.
GSP has been working with Greg Jackson and the Jackson camp in New Mexico and has been wrestling with the Canadian wrestling team. His last fight against Josh Kosheck at UFC 74: Respect, was against a natural wrestler so the transition to fight Hughes will be the same. GSP will be prepared for a MMA wrestler so Hughes will not have any surprises for him. Right now GSP is training in Montreal and he has enlisted a who's who to help him prepare like Denis Kang, of Keith “The Dean of Mean” Jardine, Rashad Evans, Patrick Côté, David Loiseau and Nathan Marquardt.
Recently Matt Hughes has left the Pat Miletich and Miletich Fighting System to train elsewhere. Apparently he had a falling out with MFS and now trains on his own. Both him and Robbie Lawler left MFS and have formed Team Hughes/HIT Squad which is a new gym in Illinois. However this gym is not set up yet so Hughes has been training alone with only Lawler and Jacob Hey. This is not an ideal training environment for a person that will be facing a guy that just destroyed him last time around.
Planning a new gym and having only a few training partners are going to affect his performance. Right now there are so many things in Hughes’ life that he is not able to train properly.
Bottom Line: Georges St. Pierre is the prototypical fighter. UFC president Dan White has called him the next generation of mixed martial arts fighter as he is a well rounded all purpose fighter. He has incredible kicks and punches, has the power and upper body strength over Hughes and technically a better jujitsu fighter. GSP just has too much power in the stand up.
At this point, Hughes’ career is on the decline. Had he faced Matt “The Terror” Serra, I would have picked him to lose against Serra. Hughes is not the dominant pound for pound fighter he was 5 years ago. If you have watched the Ultimate Fighter Reality show (TUF) this year, you can tell that there is something off about Hughes. Five years ago he was a pure killer, and right now he doesn’t have the eye of the tiger in his eyes. He just doesn’t seem to want it as much as he did before and he has other outside influences taking him away from fighting. With all that bible talk and him talking about God rather than training, I feel Hughes has lost the will to fight and compete.
Georges St Pierre becomes the interim UFC welterweight champion with a 2nd round KO of Matt Hughes
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