UFC 111: Note to Dan Hardy—It Is Not Safe To Get Into GSP's Head!

There has been a lot of talk lately about how Dan "the Outlaw" Hardy is using Matt Serra to "get inside Georges St-Pierre's head." Oh, really?

One would think that the results BJ Penn garnered from trying to go there would make Georges' head off limits to any serious Welter Weight competitor.

Surely, as his own head kept rebounding of the mat to meet with Georges' elbow or fists yet another time, BJ would have concluded that getting into Georges' head was not worth being in such hostile territory.

I am not an MMA fighter, but I do know that BJ did a great job of angering GSP's fans and his entourage with all the insults and trash talking he did.

A few catch phrases came out of the pre-fight threatening, (Frank Mir must have been taking notes), such as, "I am going to kill you Georges...to the death, Georges!"

However, if a death had resulted from that fight (in the eyes of this writer and of course BJ's own mother), it would have most likely been BJ who would have succumbed to the head blows, not Georges. Mrs. Penn sat watching the fight "fearing for my son's life!" According to her statement to the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

For some reason the theory persists that Matt Serra beat Georges by getting into his head and not by the great right hand punch that put Georges on the mat.

Well, that just is not so!

Georges admitted seeing a sports psychologist after the fight with Matt Serra and having carried a brick with Matt Serra's name written on it, until he finally threw it over a bridge and into a lake in Montreal. Apparently this equaled a nervous breakdown to some pundits who began spreading the vicious rumor that Georges had "come undone" after the loss.

In the event that Mr. Hardy decides to take up a new occupation post fight, this might serve as useful knowledge for a future bricklayer. There must have been other patients disposing of their own bricks too.

So many things had been going on in Georges's life before his first title defense that I believe him when Georges states he was not prepared for what he would face in the octagon that night.

Whether Georges underestimated Serra's potential threat to his title or not, it remains a well known fact that except for those closest to Matt Serra, no one else thought the "Terror" had a chance in hell of ever winning the belt away from Georges.

Did that make all those thousands to possibly a million people "headcases" as folks insisted Georges had become after that fight?

Nah! I think not.

Georges was never intimidated by the UFC fighters he met on the way up the ladder to the Welter Weight Championship. He defeated his own idol by learning a lesson: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"

His third defeat of Matt Hughes was even more spectacular than the other two fights with Hughes—all three were outstanding, unlike any other Hughes fights, at least in my opinion (if one discounts his falling unconscious on top of Carlos Newton, thereby knocking him out, which was an amazing way to win the belt in the first place).

Nearly all of Life's lessons are difficult, but I have never seen anyone learn as quickly and put his hard earned knowledge to work as effectively as Georges has. He is the first to admit that he has learned from his mistakes and turned them to his advantage in later fights.

The one thing Dan Hardy could learn from the way Georges's mind works is that the most difficult part of winning a fight is the training and conditioning that needs to be done preparing for it. Looking back after the fact won't make a difference in the outcome. Hard work and not intimidation is the factor.

Plus, when has anyone ever seen an out of shape GSP ? I doubt very much that his closest friends ever have, because he is always training and finding ways to evolve into a more efficient fighter.

Previous planning makes for perfect performance . Having surrounded himself with master game planners and training partners who come up with many unforeseen situations all propel Georges beyond most fighters' level.

As Georges has acknowledged, "just one mistake can change the outcome of a fight." So, The fighter who fights the best will win on March 27, 2010.

I will bet it is Georges.