The Greatest MMA Column 01.24.09: The Biggest Fight Ever! (Part Two)
Posted by Dan Plunkett on 01.24.2009
In part two of the now three part series, 411’s Dan Plunkett takes a look at the first battle of St. Pierre and Penn, including the “controversial decision.” Then in the fight of the week, it’s St. Pierre vs. Penn! Come on in and read this edition of the Greatest MMA Column, you won’t want to miss it!
The Biggest Fight Ever
BJ had been in the sport for about four and a half years to this point. He'd accomplished very good things, such as beating two top ranked opponents in his first three fights, dominating Takanori Gomi before submitting him to cement himself as the world's best lightweight, and then doing the impossible by moving up in weight and beating a man who was possibly the best fighter in the world, Matt Hughes. But none of those things made him great or one of the greats, a thing which he strived to achieve. What it did do was make him delusional. He trained, but barely, as he stated himself that he would only train for thirty to sixty minutes a day, never more than that. He moved up to weight classes he should have never dreamed of fighting in. BJ Penn thought he was better than superman, which is fairly common for people like him that have such great natural talent, and haven't really struggled in life. His goal was always to be the best, and he thought he could do that on his talent alone, which he would come to realize isn't true. After the Machida fight, where BJ was outweighed by about thirty pounds, BJ took another fight at middleweight and then went back down to a reasonable weight class for him: welterweight.
The UFC and BJ had been in a legal dispute since BJ decided to degrade his talent and take it to other companies and weight classes which he just doesn't have the frame for. He even tried to stop the UFC from awarding another welterweight champion, a motion which was unsuccessful. During BJ's time away from the octagon, another welterweight was busy becoming the second best welterweight in the world. Georges St. Pierre had lost in his title fight against Matt Hughes, but since then he had defeated Jason Miller, Frank Trigg, and Sean Sherk, which should have put him in line for an immediate title shot. But on the very same night he defeated Sean Sherk, BJ Penn came back to the company left twenty-two months earlier. Since BJ had never lost his title, and Georges had become the second ranked welterweight in the sport, the only logical way to sort it out was for them to fight, and fight they did.
St. Pierre at this point was known to have very good wrestling, which was shown as recently as his performance against Sean Sherk, not to mention he did well against Matt Hughes in that department. He was also known to have good stand up, his spinning back kick he landed looked like it hurt Matt Hughes, and he had stopped Jay Hieron in under two minutes. His ground and pound was best displayed against Sean Sherk, where he broke the muscle sharks nose before finishing him soon after. His BJJ was also good, though not on the level that it is today.
BJ had some of the best Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the world, as evidenced by his gold medal from the 2000 Mundial World Championship. He also had very good takedown defense, Matt Hughes was unsuccessful in taking him down, which is something that never happened. He was also very good standing, something which he showed early in his career, on top of that he had heavy hands.
BJ's takedown defense is incredible
The favorite in the fight was St. Pierre, which was probably correct. He was and still is the much bigger fighter, and if his wrestling was better than Penn's takedown defense, he could control the fight by deciding where it takes place. It was on, you had BJ Penn wanting to come in and prove he's still the true welterweight champion by beating the presumptive number one contender, and St. Pierre on a mission to get back to that title shot so he could not only beat the man who was responsible for his only loss, but to finally become recognized as the best welterweight in the world.
UFC 58: USA vs. Canada took place on March 4, 2006. The actual main event of the evening was Rich Franklin taking on St. Pierre's training partner David Loiseau, but the fight that many considered the real main event was Penn vs. St. Pierre. BJ came in just like he always is: very confident…and with the title he had won at UFC 46 around his waist along with a shirt that read "WORLD CHAMP."
The first round started off with both fighters exchanging on their feet. Under a minute into the fight, BJ opened up St. Pierre under his eye, and just a bit later hit him with a punch that just clipped Rush's nose, which caused that to bleed. Of course the infamous eye poke happened at around this time, which put Georges in the hospital and BJ claims it was the knuckle of the glove that actually went in St. Pierre's eye. The two then clinched with both landing knees and St. Pierre muscling BJ into the cage. Soon after a failed takedown attempt by St. Pierre the two separated where after a few nice leg kicks from St. Pierre the round ended. Georges face is an absolute mess, it looks completely red. The first round was won easily by Penn, mostly due to the damage he did, but also for defending the takedown and flat out beating Georges in the stand up.
Round two starts off with GSP looking very hyper and he starts throwing all sorts of punches and kicks at BJ. Then pure awesomeness happens when BJ just jumps over a leg kick Georges throws, it's really amazing to see his ability to dodge punches and kicks. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that BJ has mad dip game. Soon after St. Pierre gets his first takedown of the night, but BJ just pops right back up, which leads to St. Pierre landing his second takedown of the night. After about a minute of being on the bottom and taking some punches from GSP, BJ pops right back to his feet seemingly instantaneously just as the opportunity presents itself. After that they exchange on the feet pretty evenly, and then they clinch which is where you can tell BJ is breathing heavily. About ten seconds before the end of the round, St. Pierre scores a nice takedown. St. Pierre wins this round because of the three takedowns, controlling him on top for a minute or so, and controlling the clinch. The scorecard now stands even at 19-19.
Awesome
The third and final round begins with both men standing and Georges lands a nice leg kick. Georges then clinches with the Hawaiian which leads to him picking Penn up and slamming him to the mat. But soon after BJ once more bounces back to his feet, and it looks like Georges has color coordinated his shorts with his face for the fight, well BJ took care of the face part for him. Then Georges clinches with BJ again and puts him against the cage, BJ has no answer for it and looks very tired. Then they separate and BJ shoots for the takedown, putting Georges against the fence before tripping him to the ground. Georges is up just seconds later and has BJ in the clinch against the cage yet again. BJ used up all he had left on that takedown and now he's just staring at the clock. Soon after they separate and Georges rushes in for another takedown with just a minute left. BJ then throws his leg over Georges' shoulder looking for an omoplata, and then showing his incredible flexibility brings his other leg along. He then looks for the gogoplata, but he doesn't quite have his shin under Georges' chin, and then Georges fights out of it and lands a nice elbow and horn signals ending the fight. The round easily belonged to GSP, he had a nice slam, some takedowns, and continued to outmuscle Penn and control the clinch. While BJ did have some nice moments in the round, such as the takedown, a good knee in the clinch, and the gogoplata attempt at the end, St. Pierre clearly took it. I have it 29-28 for St. Pierre.
Two out of three judges agree with me, with the other scoring it 29-28 for Penn. This is where the controversy started. Some people will argue that BJ should have won the fight, in all honesty, these people are either stupid, don't know how to score a fight, or possibly both. All fights in the UFC are judged using the 10-point must system. Now while the usage of the system in mixed martial arts may be somewhat controversial as some think it's not the best way to score fights, that's irrelevant at the moment and a topic for another day. The system is basically the winner of the round gets ten points, and the loser gets nine or less, unless a fighter has a point deducted, and rounds that judges think are a tie are scored 10-10. Winners of the round are decided on by effective striking, grappling, aggression, and octagon control. The biggest reason some people seem to think BJ won the fight is because of the amount of damage he did to GSP. Yes, it is true that BJ destroyed St. Pierre's face…in the first round. After the first round of the fight, BJ did very little, if any noticeable damage to Georges. Since the 10-point must system is in effect, you're only judging one round at a time, so since rounds two and three are not round one, the damage BJ did to Georges in round one is irrelevant in judging rounds two and three. Also, that judge that sided with Penn, his name: Cecil Peoples. Case closed right there.
If you look at it correctly, there's no denying GSP won
...and if you look at him correctly in this picture he kind of looks like The Joker.
So there you have it. Now GSP wins and earns the right to go on to fight Matt Hughes for the UFC Welterweight Championship. As I noted in the little summary/preview thing in italics at the top, this is now going to be a three part series since I ended up writing so much on this fight. I think it's fitting that way anyway, since there's one column on the build up to their first fight, then one about their first fight, and then the build up to their second fight. Next week's column will be the best of the series, as we see both BJ and Georges at the lowest point of their careers, and they rise out of them to the highest point in their careers leading up to the 31st.
Fight of the Week
Since the fight of the week is usually somehow related to the topic of the column, and the only fight I talk about in the column is St. Pierre vs. Penn, so that's your fight of the week!
That's it for this week. Next week is going to be awesome, so don't forget to come back to the Greatest MMA Column! Here's MMA Live with their breakdown of UFC 93, and they look forward to Affliction: Day of Reckoning, which happens to take place tonight!
