UFC 129 review: GSP stinks up card of the year

UFC 129 was the first in a major stadium, with 55,000 fans in at Rogers Centre in Ontario, Canada. It was the largest MMA event in North American history and it was the first to have every single fight televised live whether it be on facebook, Fuel TV or PPV.

The UFC matched this hype by putting together a spectacular card with a fight between former Light Heavyweight champions Randy Couture and Lyoto Machida, a fight that very well could have headlined a smaller UFC card, being the third main fight.

There were two title fights for the first time since the Abu Dhabi card last year, and like that card the main fight stank.

The preliminaries were all exciting, from John Makdessi’s spinning backfist knockout over Kyle Watson to Pablo Garza’s flying triangle win over Yves Jabouin.

Jason MacDonald and Ryan Jensen engaged in an exciting 90 second scrap that saw MacDonald lock up the fight ending triangle choke while being hammered from inside the guard by Jensen.

Claude Patrick and Daniel Roberts put on a solid, highly skilled fight in which Patrick outfought Roberts to earn a unanimous decision and Ivan Menjivar would have scored knockout of the night any other night with his nose breaking elbow on Charlie Valencia.

The Fuel TV portion of the fight also went well. Jason Ellenberger scored a much needed emphatic win over Sean Pierson, another knockout of the night contender and Rory MacDonald showed he was legit by outmuscling and outworking Nate Diaz over three rounds.

The PPV undercard was highly entertaining.

Mark Bocek and Ben Henderson went to war as predicted, with Henderson escaping numerous submission attempts and punishing Bocek from the clinch to earn a hard fought unanimous decision whose 30-27 scorecard was accurate but hardly reflects the competitiveness of the bout.

In the fight that I had thought would spoil the card, Matyushenko vs Brilz, “The Janitor” did us a favour by throwing down and taking Brilz out in 20 seconds in what was one of five spectacular knockouts on the card and paved way for the business end of the card.

Lyoto Machida got his comeback on track with a karate kid-esque knockout over UFC hall of famer Randy Couture. Couture just couldn’t hunt down the ever elusive Machida and was getting picked off for much of the first round.

“The Dragon” ended matters decisively, removing one of the Natural’s teeth with a nasty switch-flying-front kick (that has to be seen to be described as you can tell from my abysmal attempt). Couture announced his retirement following the fight.

Then came the title fights and the first one lived up to expectations. Jose Aldo defended his UFC Featherweight title for the first time (it was his third defence overall counting his WEC reign) against a highly competitive Mark Hominick.

Aldo’s power was the difference as when Hominick was outlanding him, he landed some heavy shots that dropped or hurt Hominick and was able to further punish Hominick from inside the closed guard.

Hominick looked on his way out in the fourth when a massive swelling came out of his right forehead but he was allowed to continue and he turned things around in the fifth and final round, punishing Aldo from on top earning a 10-8 round on two of the judges scorecards, but it was not enough to secure the decision (I scored the fight 48-46 for Aldo).

Then came the main event.

Georges St Pierre was defending his welterweight title for a record sixth time and it was the fifth of those six defences that has gone the full five rounds.

I’ve been a defender of GSP in the past; Fitch proved too tough to finish, GSP suffered a groin tear against Alves, Hardy showed better than expected submission defence (although I felt he could have been softened up with better shots from on top) and Koscheck has dangerous power that he showed once or twice in that fight, enough to keep GSP from really opening up.

Jake Shields on the other hand showed he has no idea what he’s doing in a stand-up fight. He has next to no body rotation with his punches and he drops his hands and panics when attacked.

This was the first time I felt that GSP went backwards skill-wise between fights. It was obvious his hands were no where near as crisp in this fight.

He threw no left hooks, no body punches and his kicks (apart from the one left high kick he finally threw which dropped Shields) were sporadic.

Shields showed after a few minutes he wasn’t in the same league as GSP, and he also showed he couldn’t take him down and GSP should have sensed this weakness and attacked. This is where my major criticism comes from GSP.

I understand that his eye injury played some part in his poor performance in the last half of the fight, but it shouldn’t have gone that far.

If the guy isn’t in your league you take him out because if you don’t take him out, things can happen that can even up a fight. You can break your hand, you can get cut or in this case you can get punched in the eye and your vision gets blurry.

I was a boxing fan before I was an MMA fan.I’m used to seeing guys like Teddy Atlas and Emmanuel Steward in the corner yelling at their charges to take guys out and not play it safe.

I also believe that a champion’s duty is to take guys out when he can to prove he’s the best in the world. Great fighters from the past like Ray Robinson, Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Carlos Monzon (just to name a few) would step it up and take tough guys out and prove how great they were by leaving no doubt.

It’s great being an athlete and a martial artist and having a great strategy, but at the end of the day it’s a fight and you have to take guys out and give the fans what they want.

It’s one thing to take few risks against a guy like Josh Koscheck who has serious power, but against someone like Jake Shields who is only dangerous on the ground and has shown he can’t take you down, you open up and take him out.

I thought this performance was far worse then Anderson Silva against Demian Maia or Thales Leites because those guys were butt scooting and trying to survive.

Shields was happy to stand up and GSP didn’t make him pay because of it and that deserves criticism.

UFC and MMA Schedule – including Australian fightcards