UFC 79: Nemesis

[RiverRat]

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

[RiverRat]

Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva
Silva -115
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The match every mixed martial arts fans has been waiting for the last 4 years. To me, this is the ultimate Christmas gift. I’m not going to sugar coat this MMA match up. Wanderlei “The Axe Murderer” Silva (31-7-1-1) is going to beat Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell (20-5). No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Wanderlei Silva is one of the most feared strikers in the world and has fought every top level MMA fighter in the world no matter the size. He lost to Cro Cop in PRIDE Final Conflict Absolute and to Mark Hunt (a K-1 champion) at PRIDE Shockwave 2004, but those two fighters are much heavier than him.
Silva has incredible striking skills as he is from the famed Chute Boxe academy in Brazil and trains with Shogun and Anderson Silva. His Muay Thai kicks and strikes are devastating. He has fought and beaten some of the best fighters in the world like Kazuyuki Fujita (heavyweight), Ricardo Arona, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Judo champion Hidehiko Yoshida twice, Yuki Kondo, Ikuhisa Minowa, Dan Henderson, Gilbert Yvel, Guy Mezger and two devastating KO’s over UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton Rampage Jackson at PRIDE Final Conflict 2003 and at PRIDE 28: High Octan. His wins over Jackson were so dominating that it was embarrassing.
Wanderlei Silva has great strikes and if the fight goes to the ground he has a Brazilian Jujitsu black belt. He is an all round fighter that has the ability to fight on the ground. Silva has fought all types of mixed martial arts fighter like jujitsu specialist, strikers, wrestlers and judo experts. He can adapt to all styles and Liddell has nothing that can surprise Silva at UFC 79 expect for some looping over hands.
Silva has been training with Team Couture in Vegas at Xtremecouture and Randy will have important inside information on how to fight Liddell. He is fighting top level fighters while training. Where is Chuck Liddell training? He is still doing the same routine and fighting at The Pit fight the same guys. At this point in his career he is too old to learn anything new, and just doesn’t want to learn.
I have said time and time again Chuck Liddell is a one dimensional fighter. He has no ground game whatsoever. Everyone knows he will strike. Yes, he has power and the ability to knock out fighters BUT when he fights fighters that have equal to or better power and striking skills, he WILL lose. Read our MMA matchup reports when he fought Keith Jardine and when he fought Rampage Jackson.
Liddell throws wild punches and his hands are constantly wide and to the side. When he fights a pure striker like Silva he will not be able to handle his striking technique or power. Whenever Liddell fights a striker he loses like Quinton Jackson, Keith Jardine and he should have lost to Alistair Overeem if he had better cardio.
Liddell is an average fighter at best. He is an good striker that has wins over below average strikers like Jeff Monson, Guy Mezger, Kevin Randleman, Vitor Belfort, Tito Ortiz, Renato Sobral, Jeremy Horn and Murilo Bustamante. Can Liddell win? Yes but if will be a lucky punch. Silva has faced much better and harder striker in the world and in my opinion there is no way he will be able to KO Silva.
Bottom Line: Silva wants this fights and is training really really hard and right now. He looks shredded and ripped. Silva is one of the most feared fighters in the world and lives and breaths fighting. He wants to beat Liddell and beat him badly. Liddell is basically living the life as a superstar. He is partying way too much at clubs and there are constant rumors about him doing drugs. He is on the tail end of his career and he just does not want to train to improve his fight game. His ground is non existent and his striking is not what it use to be. His fighting stance is way too wide and he will be caught with shots. His mentality has been you have to take shots to get shots but when he is fighting a superior stand up fighter that theory gets him beat. Chuck wants to act in TV shows and party like a rock star while Silva is training to tear his head off. I believe that they are at least 6 fighters right now that can beat Chuck on the UFC.
I honestly see no one particular attribute that Liddell has over Silva. He is not as strong, does not have as hard of hands, has one kick in his arsenal (high right leg kick), does not have the hand speed and is not better on the ground than Silva. Silva is one the most feared MMA fighter in the world and there is a reason for that.
Liddell is the face of the UFC and he is marketed as such but you have to look past the corporate marketing machine to realize that Liddell is not a good fighter. All Liddell is, is a name and Silva will expose him so badly in this fight.
Wanderlei will lay a beating on Chuck in the first right and at the start of the second round will punish Chuck until the ref will mercifully stop this fight.

Wanderlei will KO Liddell.