Issue 098

February 2013

What might happen in a 2013 meeting between Silva and St Pierre?

After quite literally years (at least two or three, anyway) of feverish excitement and pre-hatched chicken-counting, one of the final obstacles to perhaps the very biggest fight in MMA history seemed to have been cleared when Canadian hero Georges St Pierre (23-2) beat Carlos Condit in Montreal in November. However, neither a non-committal St Pierre nor the cage-side Anderson Silva (33-4), arguably the sport’s two best fighters and biggest stars, challenged the other to a catchweight champion-versus-champion mega-fight. 

Between the date, the money, the weight limit and the status of their respective titles, clearly there was much to negotiate before the two touched gloves.

Welterweight GSP, who in the past has talked of feeling sluggish when trying to pack on the muscle, will be giving away some very significant size to a fantastic striker with solid takedown defence and a slick ground game. As a professional fighter, he also needs to think about his staggeringly lucrative endorsement deals and whether a loss to Silva, particularly if he’s blown away easy and early, will hurt his name value. The UFC should also be concerned about that, given GSP’s status as the company’s biggest moneyspinner, and whether it will damage the prestige and drawing power of the welterweight title to see its champion soundly beaten. 

There’s also the issue of the Canadian’s knee. On the shelf for 

19 months between his dull decision win over Jake Shields and his thrilling five-round war with Condit, the knee seemed to be no problem, but will it be in future? Lesser injuries have ended careers and at the very least severely hampered future sporting performance. GSP will surely need to be in exceptional form, and condition, to beat Silva.

The peerless Brazilian middleweight, closing in on 40 and riding a winning streak that dates back to April 2006 will be expected to win, particularly with that size advantage. He’s fought three times at light heavyweight while holding the 185lb belt, and in none of those fights did he look small – and he finished all of them in the first round. Even cutting weight to below 180lb (something he hasn’t done since 2006, and not regularly since 2003), Silva will be noticeably bigger. And size matters, though it should be remembered it could actually work to St Pierre’s advantage. Much older than last time he tried it, Silva could enter the cage weight-drained and listless, leaving him vulnerable to GSP’s exceptional takedown game. Also, given his reliance on his speed and reflexes, will age suddenly catch up with Silva? It’s going to happen one day.

A guaranteed success at the box office and sure to inspire a great crowd atmosphere at bell time, the fight itself could easily fall well below lofty expectations. Neither man is a stranger to audience displeasure with GSP even being booed in Toronto for his safety-first, second and third performance against Shields. Those who suffered through Silva’s willfully atrocious fights with Patrick Cote, Thales Leites and Demian Maia have reason to fear seeing Silva in such a high stakes fight against a man cornered by the ‘guru of cautious gameplanning,’ Greg Jackson.

With the possible exception of standout featherweight José Aldo, GSP and Silva are near-universally considered the sport’s two best ‘pound-for-pound’ fighters. Both have ruled their divisions since 2006 (Silva) and 2008 (GSP), facing some very, very talented challengers and only rarely being troubled by them. And if not for Matt Serra’s still-shocking UFC 69 bludgeoning of St Pierre, which GSP avenged with a brutal display a year later, he’d have been on top of the 170lb division since his late 2006 annihilation of Matt Hughes.

Between them, they have defeated a who’s who of elite fighters in championship fights, including Hughes, BJ Penn, Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, Shields, Condit (all GSP victims), Rich Franklin, Dan Henderson, Forrest Griffin and Chael Sonnen (all beaten, and finished, by Silva). If Silva can add GSP’s name to his list, or, less likely, St Pierre can overcome the odds and add Silva’s, it will cement either man’s already Hall of Fame-worthy legacy as one of the very best of the very best in fighting history.