The Biggest Fight of All-Time
Last weekend Manny Pacquiao won a decision which was described across all media outlets as “controversial” over Juan Marquez to retain his WBO Welterweight Championship. Pacquiao, boxing’s biggest star, had to win in order to keep the sport relevant. Had he lost, all hopes for a superfight with undefeated Floyd Mayweather would have been scrapped. Promoters have been trying to put that fight together for years since they are the two best boxers in the world and a fight between them is the only truly interesting thing left in the boxing world. If Marquez won, all hopes for boxing’s biggest fight would have died. Of course for the UFC the situation is nowhere near as dire since they’re going to be around for a long time, but they should take note of this and realize that time is running out for them to do the biggest fight in the history of mixed martial arts.
The consensus top two fighters in the world for the last several years, and maybe of all time, have been middleweight king Anderson Silva and welterweight king Georges St-Pierre. Both men have dominated their division and have been at the top of the UFC for years but rather than fight each other they are defending their belts next year; Silva in a rematch against Chael Sonnen and St-Pierre against Nick Diaz. After these fights there is nothing else left for these two in their respective divisions. At UFC 100 over two years ago the idea of pitting these two against each other was floated around. Earlier this year Dana White said he was going to have to do this fight since it was the biggest thing the UFC could do. He was right then, but hasn’t seemed to press the issue since. Now the UFC is in quite the pickle next year.
Sonnen nearly won a decision over Silva last year, until Silva pulled off perhaps the greatest submission in UFC history in the fights final moments to retain his championship. Regardless of Silva going into the fight with a rib injury and Sonnen being juiced, it was a close call for the middleweight champ. There’s always the chance that Sonnen’s performance wasn’t a one-time thing and there’s a chance he could beat Silva. As for St-Pierre, he is going up against a tough opponent in Nick Diaz. GSP isn’t mentally strong, as evidenced by him losing his mind when he got punched in the eye against Jake Shields or pulled his groin against Thiago Alves and needed Greg Jackson to calm him down. Ever since Matt Serra knocked him out, GSP has been afraid to go after people and finish them and instead grinds out boring decisions. Diaz talks a lot of trash and taunts, and there’s a chance that could get in GSP’s head and cost him.
If either one of them lose next year, the selling point for their fight is lost. It isn’t two champions – the two best in the world – going face to face. Another issue the UFC faces is the public cries for a match up of Silva and Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones. The main reason this fight shouldn’t happen is the fact Jones hasn’t cleared out the light heavyweights and cemented his spot as the top guy. With challenges in Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, Dan Henderson, Phil Davis, and the inevitable arrival of Muhammad Lawal, Jones still has some tests to pass. Silva and St. Pierre have been at the top of their divisions for years while Jones has only been there a few months with just one title defense under his belt.
Assuming they both win their next defenses, Silva and GSP must fight each other and it has to happen soon. Silva is getting older and is bound to lose some of the sharp skill that has kept him on top for so long, and GSP desperately needs to fight somebody who will put his back against the wall and make him bring out his best. GSP has been far from his best these last couple years since he fights to not lose rather than win. In fact, the biggest reason this fight may not happen is Georges St-Pierre.
Is GSP Afraid?
People have mused that GSP won’t take a Silva fight because he is scared of what might happen. GSP has come out and said he isn’t afraid to fight anybody but the theory is still worth picking apart. As mentioned above, GSP does get overwhelmed during fights. He panics if he’s hurt and he has fought as safe as possible ever since he regained his championship following the embarrassing loss to Matt Serra. He gets himself all worked up and tries so hard to just not lose. He grinds out boring decisions and that’s a game plan that won’t work against Anderson Silva. GSP has said he doesn’t know if he’ll take the fight because Silva is so big, but that doesn’t really hold up once you dig a little deeper.
If the two were to fight it would most likely be at a catch-weight of something like 180 pounds or maybe a little less. Silva has said he’d be willing to cut the weight, but GSP says he isn’t sure since he’s not big enough. GSP walks around at about 195 and cuts to 170, then comes into a fight around 185-190. His defense against fighting Silva is based on Silva’s walking weight between fights. GSP is training year round so he’s always in that 195 or a little more weight range. Silva lets himself go between fights and balloons up to about 230 then cuts to 185 when it is fight time. Weight cuts for Silva are nothing, as evidenced by him being at 185 nearly a week before he fought Yushin Okami this year. When he goes into a fight he doesn’t put back on much more weight and only weighs somewhere in the 190s.
If they were to do the fight at a catch-weight below 185, they would weigh nearly the same on fight night. After that the size differences aren’t that major. Silva’s reach is 77.5 to GSP’s 76. Silva is 6’2” while GSP is 5’10”. These are not alarming size disparities. Rashad Evans wants to fight Jon Jones and Jones is nearly half a foot taller than him and has almost a foot on him in terms of reach. Randy Couture fought guys like Tim Sylvia and Sylvia had five inches in reach and stood seven inches taller than him. Not to mention the fact Sylvia weighed like 40 pounds more than him. Couture fought Brock Lesnar, who used to have to cut weight to make heavyweight while Randy was undersized for the weight, so there was a nearly 60 pound weight difference between the two. GSP is not as overmatched as he makes it seem considering many fighters have taken more challenging match ups. Randy Couture was probably the greatest fighter of all time before Silva began this run and Couture never shied away from a fight because somebody would weigh a little more than him.
GSP’s coach has recently floated the idea of him dropping down to 155 but that is completely ridiculous. For one, he’d clear out the division since he’d be huge and it wouldn’t even be fun to watch. Second, he’s had two years to prepare for a Silva fight and to drop down in weight suddenly makes it seem like he might have some doubts about how a Silva fight would go. GSP and his camp fail to realize that wrestlers give Silva problems and he has the best wrestling in the history of mixed martial arts. If anybody was to come at Silva and wrestle him down and wear him out it could be GSP. But it seems unlikely we’ll ever know because Georges has his own worries.
St-Pierre isn’t receptive to the idea of a fight with Anderson Silva because he knows that mentally it would be too much for him to handle. Silva breaks opponents’ wills. Yushin Okami is one of the mentally toughest fighters in the sport and had never been knocked out, but Silva broke his spirit in a matter of moments. He put his hands at his side and dared Okami to punch him and Okami got too afraid to bother swinging since he knew Silva would just take the punch without reacting to it and counter with his own hard right. Forrest Griffin is a meticulous game planner who for years boasted that you could put him in the octagon with anybody and he’d make it an interesting fight. Silva broke his spirit in one round and Griffin hasn’t looked like he’s wanted to fight again since. Silva put his hands down, dodged strikes like he was in The Matrix, dared Forrest to hit him, then knocked him out. Griffin ran out of the cage in embarrassment.
GSP was in attendance when Silva spent the first three rounds of his fight against Demian Maia taunting and dancing, trying to psych him out. GSP panics if he’s hit hard, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d be psyched out by watching somebody do the Jakal Dance mid-fight. Silva is a man who put on a Jabbawockeez mask and got in Vitor Belfort’s face to psych him out. He did that that Matrix-style dodging against Rich Franklin too. Silva toys with people and makes them feel foolish for stepping into the cage with him. As if submitting Chael Sonnen in the fight’s final moments wasn’t enough, Silva put on his black belt and bowed in front of Sonnen just to mess with him.
St-Pierre can say size is the biggest obstacle in the way of a fight with Anderson Silva, but fighters with less talent than GSP have fought bigger people. St-Pierre should realize immediately that he’s bigger than BJ Penn and BJ wasn’t afraid to fight. All of these boring decisions are hurting GSP’s legacy. He should realize that if he beats Silva, people will say he is the best ever and if he loses people will say that he simply lost to a fighter much bigger than him. GSP says he wants to go down as the best ever. Does it mean more for your legacy if you grind out boring decisions on fighters in a weight where you aren’t challenged, or if you step up and fight the consensus pound for pound king of the sport? The outcome is secondary, the simple fact that GSP would take the fight shows that he is ready for any challenge and isn’t afraid of anybody.
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