UFC 129 Fight Card: Why Jake Shields Is the Biggest Threat to GSP's Title

Nick CaronMar 12, 2011

The UFC 129 main event will finally see one of the matches fans have been asking to see for years now, when Georges St-Pierre defends his UFC welterweight championship against perhaps the one man who can take it from him, Jake Shields.

Since defeating Matt Hughes for the title at UFC 65 back in November of 2006, St-Pierre has been on a streak that has many fans and experts, including UFC president Dana White, concluding that he is the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

St-Pierre has completely torn through through the welterweight division, defeating top contender after top contender in what may be the UFC’s strongest division, top-to-bottom.

While fighters like B.J. Penn, Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck and Thiago Alves have looked great against other fighters, none of them has been able to step in and defeat the French-Canadian champion.

The only hiccup that the champion has suffered since that title victory in 2006 came in a surprising upset loss to Matt Serra. Serra had recently won The Ultimate Fighter and earned himself a title shot that many believed he didn’t truly deserve, due to all the competition in the weight class already.

Serra shocked everyone, though, when he clipped St-Pierre in the first round of the fight and was eventually able to get the referee TKO stoppage shortly thereafter.

Serra himself looked absolutely astonished as White put the title around his waist—and for good reason. There’s no taking anything away from Serra that he was able to win the fight, but the flash TKO knockout really didn’t prove that he was the better fighter.

St-Pierre re-focused on the sport and dominated Koscheck and Matt Hughes in back-to-back fights before getting his rematch against Serra at UFC 79. The outcome of the fight would leave no question as to who the better fighter was.

From start to finish, St-Pierre completely out-classed Serra who looked like he didn’t even belong in the same cage as the man who he defeated just over a year prior. St-Pierre took back what was rightfully his, winning the UFC welterweight title back and re-cementing his status as the world’s best fighter at 170 pounds.

After St-Pierre’s most recent win at UFC 124 where he again dominated American Kickboxing Academy’s Josh Koscheck, UFC president Dana White made a starting declaration.

With St-Pierre’s dominance over the welterweight division and Anderson Silva’s dominance over the middleweight division, White announced that if both fighters win their next fights (against Shields and Vitor Belfort, respectively), that the two men would fight one another next.

Anderson Silva did his part by knocking out Belfort in the first round of their fight at UFC 126, but now St-Pierre will have to defeat Shields.

Shields has been in or around the top-10 in rankings for nearly a half decade now, having defeated a who’s who of fighters. Since his last loss more than six years ago, Shields has big wins over Toby Imada, Dave Menne, Yushin Okami, Carlos Condit, Mike Pyle, Nick Thompson, Paul Daley, Robbie Lawler, Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Dan Henderson.

His status as one of the world’s top fighters is simply not up for debate.

But is he ready to face the man who may be the world’s top pound-for-pound fighter? That’s the only question that’s up for debate.

Shields has the pedigree to be a very dangerous opponent for anyone. Though he doesn’t go out and knock people out on their feet, Shields is almost Jon Fitch-like in that he brings tremendous grappling skill into his fights and has no problem grinding out decision victories if he needs to.

But while Fitch has been ranked as the No. 2 heavyweight for quite a long time now, there is a very real case to be made that Shields may be the better of the two fighters.

Shields met Fitch at the Superfight Gracie Open 2005 event. Granted, the event is quite awhile ago, and pure grappling and MMA aren’t the same thing, but the fact remains that Shields was able to submit Fitch with a rear naked choke in that contest.

St-Pierre completely dominated Fitch, who is now perhaps a win over Penn away from a title shot of his own. But Shields is a different kind of grappler than Fitch.

While Fitch uses his superior wrestling to bring fighters to the ground and pound his opponents, Shields utilizes his ground-game to submit about one out of every three opponents he faces.

There are a lot of people who believe Shields was undeservedly given the decision over Martin Kampmann in his debut at UFC 121, but similarly to how Kampmann lost another decision to Diego Sanchez, he just didn’t do enough to convincingly win the fight.

The bottom line is that St-Pierre has already completely cleaned out the UFC welterweight division. There just aren’t any fighters who realistically stand much of a chance against him who are currently fighting in the UFC.

Sure, there’s a rematch against Fitch as a possibility, but it’s hard to believe that the outcome would be much different than their first fight. In that fight, St-Pierre beat Fitch from pillar to post, leaving the challenger with one of the worst looking post-fight faces in recent memory.

The only guy left who we haven’t seen St-Pierre fight and completely dominate is Shields.

Shields doesn’t have an overly exciting fighting style from a fan’s perspective, but he is extremely effective, nonetheless.

With the rest of the welterweight division having been repeatedly humiliated and out-classed by St-Pierre, Shields is really the only man on the UFC roster who one could make a realistic case for as a potential real challenge for the title.

Will Shields be the one who ends St-Pierre’s run as the champion? Or will he be another name on the long list of top contenders who GSP has run through on his way to the super fight with Silva?

At UFC 129, we’ll see if Shields is the real deal or if he has simply been the big fish in a small pond.