Why Is The Criticism Of GSP So Unexpected?

First of all this is not a hate article...I am just going to state simple facts and opinions that show how I saw this coming, and you will probably begin to wonder why you didn't see it either.

GSP has recently been proclaimed the new face of the UFC.  Since this new evolution of UFC the faces have been: Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, and now GSP.

Tito Ortiz was the Huntington Beach Bad Boy...he had just as many haters as he had fans.  Tito was always going to be a draw because the fans that did not want to see Tito win would pay to see him get knocked out and that was a pure fact.

Chuck Liddell had a close run with Randy Couture to see who was going to take over as the new face once Tito had started to fade.  Now I am not saying that his wins over Randy didn't have something to do with his take over, but his handling of Tito with the whole we never were friends lost him some fans. 

Chuck appeared a little jerkish, and the release of his book kept him on the jerkish track...along with the fact that he is Dana White's little croney made some people start to dislike him even more.  Therefore he had the people that loved him and the people that would pay to see him get destroyed.

Brock Lesnar would have been my pick to be the next face.  His childish antics during the Heath Herring match, his bragging about who his wife is...like it was 1998 again and she was still a sex symbol, and his trash talk toward a sponsor gives many reasons to have the hate for this man coupled with a skill set that could give him reasons to be loved.

Why not Lesnar?  I am thinking maybe that the open trashing of a sponsor while standing over their logo could have made a difference.  His illness could have played a role with his absence how could he be the face of the company?  It could also be the fact that the Heavyweight division isn't blown open like the others were.  Brock has more competition to stay dominant in the division he is in than any of the others mentioned.

GSP now holds the title...since Chuck's fall from grace GSP has stayed fairly dominant, as well as Anderson Silva, BJ Penn and now Lyoto Machida.  All of these champions look very dominant.  And BJ already has the following of fans as well as haters.  The main difference there is BJ does not have a legit challenger out there that anyone can see him getting beat in any aspect of his game.

Anderson and Lyoto are way too nice of guys with Machida going on a recent tear and knocking people out how can you be critical of either of their styles?

Which Brings us to GSP...just as nice of a guy as the last two mentioned, so how can we hate him?  Well for starters the greasing debate got the ball rolling.  How else can you get someone to turn on an athlete than to catch them cheating.  Whether or not it played that much of a role in the fight with BJ Penn is as arguable as the fact that steroids gave major league baseball players more power, but they still had to hit the ball in order for it to go over the fence.

Now I realize who is the least popular group in all of MMA?  Wrestlers...wrestlers are known for having long drawn out matches in which they hold their opponents down for the duration of the fight and make fifteen minutes of hell for some fans...let alone in a championship fight.  So any championship fight that goes the distance is going to have some fans in an uproar, but going the distance being dominated by a wrestler is really going to cause a stink.

With Matt Serra TKOing GSP it leads many people to think that GSP has a definite weakness in his stand up game, and his dominating wrestling performances don't help much either.  So now the haters are tuning in to see GSP get knocked out by a dominant striker and when he doesn't they hate it. 

I did the same thing when Liddell would finish an opponent by knocking them out...I thought Chuck's ground game was weak...which we know it wasn't...but neither is GSP's stand up.  So all of the GSP fans that like to defend him and try to understand why there is so much hate out there for him...it is because there is supposed to be that is how he got to be the face of the UFC.  You can't carry the company on popularity alone.