I’m worried about my Canadian friends. While Pete Sell and others are questioning Georges St. Pierre’s mental health, it’s his fans I’m concerned about. Everyone is whispering about his chin. He got knocked out by the lightly regarded Matt Serra. And the rematch has St. Pierre backers more than a little nervous.

Relax. Remember after the second Matt Hughes fight when everyone was confident that St. Pierre was a world beater, a modern Frank Shamrock who would grow into the sport’s best fighter? He’s not that guy anymore. He’s better. And his trainer says his chin is rock solid.

“Oh my God yeah. That shot that really hurt him hit him on the back of the head,” Greg Jackson said. “It never hit him on the chin. He’s spars at the Grant Brothers gym in Montreal with these World Champion boxers and they nail him. They nail him. He has a really good chin. He just got caught. Keith Jardine actually has a really good chin too. But he can get caught as well. Anybody can get caught if you’re hit in the right spot.”

The myth of the MMA Superman has been exposed many times. At the dawn of the decade both PRIDE and the UFC had fighters that were deemed too hard headed to be KO’ed. But Kazayuki Fujita was stopped by Wanderlei Silva. And Wesley “Cabbage” Correira has been stopped a number of times, most notably by Tank Abbott. The tiny 4 OZ gloves make it impossible for anyone to be an unstoppable Tyson-esque killing machine. They magnify the puncher’s chance significantly. So while it remains possible for Matt Serra, for anyone, to beat Georges St. Pierre, it isn’t very likely.

“What Georges did in that fight was, he bent down at the waist and got hit right behind the ear,” Jackson said. “And it knocked his equilibrium off and he never really recovered from it. Georges has a great chin and I’m sure Matt Serra’s going to hit him at some point and everybody will be able to see it.”

The St.Pierre that meets Serra for the second time will be a different fighter. He’s training full-time now at Jackson’s gym in New Mexico and it’s been the perfect fit for St. Pierre as a person and as a fighter. When he steps into the Octagon this time, he’ll be ready.

“I was there for the (first) Matt Serra fight and I could see that he wasn’t there mentally. He had partied too much and he wasn’t focussed,” Jackson said. “There’s a certain confidence that Georges has when he’s ready and he didn’t have it that night. He was nervous. But it wasn’t my place to say anything. I wasn’t the lead guy in the corner where the metal meets the meat. After that fight he wanted me to be the lead guy, so we’ve done Koscheck, Hughes, and now Serra again.”

The training at Jackson’s is perfect for St. Pierre. He was working with mostly Canadian training partners in the past, but as is common for big fish in small ponds, was having trouble finding people who could push him to the limit. Jackson will push St. Pierre. Physically and mentally. When he arrives in New Mexico, St. Pierre comes with a notebook full of philosophical and mathematical questions to discuss with Jackson. Then he’s ready to work.

“That’s where their teammates come in. Because they’re really competitive guys. Their teammates will really push them,” Jackson said. “Instead of sitting back on their laurels, a guy like Georges St. Pierre, comes down and they train and their teammates can really push them. Hold them down, tap them out, rock them with punches, or whatever it takes. The team is a real key element at that point, because you’re able to say ‘Your this great guy but so-and-so just whacked you in the head. You can’t have that happening and it’s because you’re doing this or that.’ I just try to keep them improving, keep them focussed on constantly getting better, constantly looking for a new challenge. Even if it’s outside the cage. Trying to keep them interested-that’s my job.”

Fighting in front of his home town fans, against an opponent who upset him and then sent minions to embarrass him in the media, should be plenty to keep St. Pierre interested. After a win we may see the young Canadian challenge Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva.

“Each fighter has an personal growth plan. We look at the holes in their game and that I try to bring up to the next level,” Jackson said. “If you want to , say, beat Anderson Silva, you’ve got to be able to strike with him or you’re not going to beat him. You have to at least be strong enough in every aspect to hang with the guys who are really good in that aspect. That way you can game plan around it. Otherwise, you’ll just be desperately looking for the one hole or opening and they’re able to capitalize on that desperation. Georges is just the epitome of that. He’s so good at everything that it makes my job easy.”

Photo Courtesy of Dayton Daily News

By Dave Walsh

Do you think that Rich Franklin is the best? Do you think he is just a bland dude from Ohio? Do you have no real opinon about him? Well, express it anyway on our forum!

When I think about Rich “Ace” Franklin, honestly, the last thing I think of is calling him “Ace” after being completely decimated by Anderson Silva on two occasions. There is absolutely no shame in going down to the deadly striking power of Anderson Silva, as many have before Franklin, and many will after Franklin, but the real question is where does Rich go from here? On Saturday Rich Franklin heads into a fight with a very game Travis Lutter, with both men having losses to Anderson Silva as their last fight.

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I had the idea of doing a betting column on this site and finally decided to actually put it into practice.

The concept is pretty simple. Two of us each start with the proverbial thousand nicker, as Farrow is a cockney, (£1,000 to those not familiar) and each week we select a couple of bets that seem like value to us and see how it goes. The bets can relate to MMA, Boxing, K-1 or anything of that ilk. So here we go with week one…

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So far, so good. The first two weeks of this seventh season of The Ultimate Fighter have exceeded my expectations, in that they have contained pretty much nothing but fights, ranging from the not-so-hot to the perfectly enjoyable, and very little of the general meatheadery that has become the show’s calling card and which makes the entire sport look like fucking amateur hour. Can this trend continue? Can the rest of the fights this season be as spirited as some of those we’ve seen already? Can the overall meathead level be kept within tolerances? Find out, as we move into . . . the house! I am not hopeful.

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Canadians love their sports heroes. Wayne Gretzky is pretty much worshipped as a god up here. A few years back, Gretz’ along with Don Cherry both made CBC’s top-ten list of the Greatest Canadian ever. But that’s hockey. A Canadian institution. A sport, dominated by Canadians. With other sports, the situation is a little bit different…

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From MMA.TV

I was stoked to be joining HCF. We really had a good feeling about
Keith (HCF matchmaker) and liked where HCF was headed. I was scheduled
to fight May 10th. As recently as two weeks ago, Keith had promised
myself and Derrick Noble that we would be fighting on May 10th no
matter what. Now we can’t get ahold of them; keith won’t return our
managers calls or e-mails. In fact, it took another fighter’s manager
to tell us that the show was postponed. And even after that, we still
have not talked to HCF.

I understand shit happens but they need to communicate with their
fighters. Had they called me and told me that there was a chance we
wouldn’t be fighting, I would have made plans accordingly. As it is, I
was counting on that money for a deposit on a new house. Not to mention
I have been training and dieting for that fight and have even missed
classes in order to make sure my training is where it needed to be. HCF
may have good reason for postponing their show but no reason for not
communicating with their talent. Fighters plan their lives around their
fights and I want nothing to do with a company that doesn’t respect
that. As such, I probably won’t sign with HCF even though they have
offered me a nice contract.

You can say what you want about Dana White and his business tactics
but I will tell you this, the UFC and some of the other companies of
their ilk are in the minority in that if they say you are fighting on
this date or will be that amount, you will be fighting on that date and
getting paid that amount.

By Iain Liddle

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Buried amongst the YAMMA headlines on Saturday morning came the news that the UFC have released Jake O’Brien from his UFC contract with Palace Fighting Championships likely to be his next destination.

The 10-1 heavyweight who is fresh off a loss to Andrei Arlovski had two fights remaining on his contract and was widely considered one of the best heavyweight prospects in world MMA. The reported reasoning for the decision is that the company simply had too many athletes under contract and he was purely one of the unlucky few chosen for the chop.

Until this news broke, and even now, I have no strong opinion on O’Brien as a fighter. I have seen maybe one non-UFC fight of his and have never interviewed him. I can’t even say that based on what I have witnessed that I could class him as a particular favourite of mine. His style is often derided as boring (sometimes unfairly) and there is no apparent charisma radiating from him to instantly grab a viewer’s attention.

Despite this however the news of his release was greatly disappointing without being too much of a shock. In fact it serves as a perfect microcosmic example of an issue that plagues the entire company. Quite simply, they aren’t a sporting league or entity and no longer can they have any claim to be so.

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Oleg is informed that he has been booked for Yamma’s second show.
For more pictures likes this, visit the excellent Combat Lifestyle.

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