UFC 111: Critiquing Georges St. Pierre's Performance

There will be fans of Georges St. Pierre who will be happy with his performance no matter what he does. For the rest of us, not any victory is enough. For the casual fan, the time comes when we must look past the win to evaluate the performance as a whole.

After surveying the reactions at the local bar and over the Internet, it's clear that opinions over St. Pierre's performance could not be any more divided.

St. Pierre's biggest backers look at the fight and see a near-perfect performance. St. Pierre has hardly hit the entire fight, and he controlled the entire fight on the ground, nearly finishing on multiple occasions.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, BJ Penn's biggest fans look at St. Pierre's performance and label it a "lay and pray stall-fest."

St. Pierre did not appear happy with his own performance after the fight, and felt that he made many "stupid technical mistakes."

Georges St. Pierre's Mistakes

When St. Pierre says that he made mistakes, he could be referring to instances that basically fall under three different categories.

1. Mistakes that allowed Dan Hardy to get back to his feet.
2. Mistakes that allowed Hardy to regain guard.
3. Mistakes that allowed Hardy to escape from submission attempts.

Of those mistakes, most of them come down to small technical details. Of those mistakes, the most notable and important ones were the ones that allowed Hardy to escape from near-submissions.

The first of those mistakes occurred when St. Pierre attempted his armbar in the first round. He made a beautiful transition from back control, but he couldn't keep Hardy's arm in front of him where he would have more leverage and the appropriate angle to hyper-extend the arm.

The second occurred during the Kimura attempt, where St. Pierre failed to adjust his position in order to finish the Kimura.  Again, it came down to an issue of leverage and balance  that might have been fixed with a minor positional change.

Yet aside from these mistakes, I find it hard to really point out anything else that could really actually be called a mistake.

People can criticize St. Pierre's submission attempts if they like, but aside from them, we should address the other criticisms that will be directed at St. Pierre.

Aside from the general criticism that St. Pierre didn't finish the fight, many point to two things that St. Pierre didn't do that that cause St. Pierre to win in what many see as unspectacular fashion.

1. St. Pierre didn't attempt to stand and strike with Hardy.
2. St. Pierre didn't deliver very much damage on the ground.

The first criticism is quite unfair, and is easily dismissed. Mixed martial arts isn't about proving that you're best in as many disciplines as possible, it's about winning fights.  Hardy's only real threat to St. Pierre was in the striking disciplines, so it made complete sense for St. Pierre to avoid that area.

Furthermore, St. Pierre was given almost no reason to stand with Hardy. According to Fightmetric.com, St. Pierre was a perfect 11/11 on takedown attempts. From my own personal perspective as a watcher, Hardy never even gave St. Pierre any trouble in getting a takedown.

If engaging in striking is the only possible way to lose, and you can take away the striking option with 100% effectiveness, standing and striking would not only be risky, it would be idiotic.

As for the second criticism, St. Pierre didn't do a ton of damage to Hardy on the ground, but that is more of an issue of strategy than it is an issue of effectiveness.

If you watched the UFC Primetime series, you would have seen Renzo Gracie instructing St. Pierre to not think about striking while he was grappling. There are times when striking on the ground can increase the effectiveness of submission grappling, but to not strike while attempting submissions is more of a tactical choice than an outright mistake.

The choice might appear like a mistake in hindsight, but it wasn't really a technical problem. Moreover, Hardy helped dictate St. Pierre's strategy with his defence.

Hardy easily gave up positional advancement, but did not easily give up striking opportunities. When Hardy opens himself up for an easy pass, it's hard to criticize St. Pierre for capitalizing on the opportunity rather than staying in guard and going for the opportunity that isn't presenting itself.

St. Pierre's corner told him to avoid making the pass to a better position, but moving to a better position is hardly a reprehensible offence.

Hardy's defensive strategy that prevented him from absorbing strikes, but sacrificed position is largely responsible for a fight where St. Pierre dominated position, but couldn't inflict damage. In short, Hardy gave St. Pierre an easy way to victory, and St. Pierre took it.

Gauging The Overall Performance

Overall, performances don't get a whole lot more dominant than St. Pierre's victory over Hardy.

According to Fightmetric.com, St. Pierre out-struck Hardy 10-1 on the feet, and 164-41 on the ground.

He passed to side control eight different times, and attained back control five times.

Hardy never had a dominant position, and lost every minute of every round.

With that level of dominance, it takes some serious creativity to criticize his fighting merits. Any criticism comes down more to his ability to put on an exciting fight.

My answer to that is this: Excitement in MMA comes when a fight is evenly matched and both fighters are able to deal out effective offence. If St. Pierre isn't exciting, it's because nobody lately has been good enough to do anything to stop him from taking the fight over.

Fighters are exciting often because they're making terrible defensive mistakes. In an odd way, it's a credit to St. Pierre that some people find him boring. But if you find dominance of one of the deepest divisions in MMA boring, I think you're missing the point.