170 lbs: Matt Serra (9-4) vs. Georges St. Pierre (15-2) Welterweight Championship
What else can be said about these two? Serra, the real-life Rocky story, worked his way through the Ultimate Fighter Comeback show, scored a close (but not as controversial as some make it out to be) win over Chris Lytle in the finals, and went on to face the young champion, who had just destroyed previous welterweight kingpin Matt Hughes.
But not so fast, as this saga was postponed by the first of many injuries when GSP pulled out.
When the two finally did match up, Serra pulled out one of the most shocking upsets in all of MMA as the 10-1 underdog blasted St. Pierre with a barrage of heavy punches to put him away in the first round, giving the Canadian his first TKO loss. After the fight, St. Pierre congratulated the new champion, but afterwards their comments toward each other turned ugly. I won’t recap the entire saga because that would require an entire article in itself. Suffice it to say that both fighters feel disrespected, and they currently don’t get along.
The situation only heightened when Serra, scheduled for his first title defense against Matt Hughes, pulled out due to a back/neck injury, and GSP pounced on the opportunity and stepped in, again overwhelming Hughes and this time submitting him. Upon being given the interim title for the division, St. Pierre stated that he did not feel he was champion until he beat Serra. Now the two are finally squaring off tomorrow night, and I can say this: expect fireworks.
Serra’s heavy hands will undoubtedly play into the equation, but some are dismissing the first knockout due to Serra’s lack of previous knockouts (despite putting the solid-chinned Karo Parysian to the canvas with one shot) and the fact that the punch that started the final barrage connected as more of a forearm on the side of the head. Fluke or not (I say not), Serra will not have the element of surprise disguising his punching power this time around.
Similar to this is his top-level jiu-jitsu; Serra is a Renzo Gracie blackbelt who has destroyed names like Takanori Gomi in pure grappling competition, but has not shown a great acumen for translating his skills into MMA. Serra only has four submissions in his MMA career, and none of them come against high-level competition. However his submission defense is quite solid, and quite frankly I don’t see either man winning by submission unless there is a lot of “softening up” via strikes involved.
St. Pierre has once against become the juggernaut that he had been seen as prior to the loss to Serra, notching impressive wins by outwrestling Josh Koscheck and submitting Hughes. He has said to have been training harder than ever for this fight, as usual specializing in all areas (wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai) with high-level experts in each field, and training at Team Jackson with fighters like Rashad Evans, Nate Marquardt, and Roger Huerta. He has also been seeing a sports psychologist to eliminate the mental issues that have supposedly dogged his career thus far. He has also been in heavy competition (the two aforementioned fights) while Serra has not competed for over a year since winning the belt.
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