UFC 167: St-Pierre vs. Hendricks

[Guest dpddave]

Is there anywhere to watch the fight online without downloading? I missed it last night.

[Guest Frank Botch]

Apparently most of the media in attendence had GSP winning, rounds 1,3 and 5 went to him mostly. The lame stream media at it again. Hendricks for sure won two rounds pretty big and I'm inclined to give him at least one of the others. GSP won round 5 alright, 3 and 1 are close, as I said though I had it for Hendricks.

 

http://i.imgur.com/8HFQTkH.jpg

 

Enjoyed Sonnen's ass kicking a tremendous amount and loved Rory losing too, I'm such a hater. Good event overall, missing the pomp, pagentry and jets overhead of a real 20th anniversary though.

[Guest Frank Botch]

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/11/17/vahyryty.jpg

 

Terry Funk himself would be ashamed of the length of this retirement.

[Guest The Beltster]

I know Meltzer gave it to GSP, didn't hear about anybody else agreeing though, seemed like they all agreed with Dana at the presser, only Meltzer and another guy said they thought GSP won.

 

Anybody who thinks GSP won is a bell end.

[Guest John Hancock]

Alvarez gave it to GSP, but blamed it on how shitty the 10-9 scoring system is. He has a point. Everyone agrees that Hendricks won 2 and 4 and GSP won 3 and 5 and, whilst Hendricks obviously smashed GSP to bits overall, the stupid scoring system means that doesn't matter and it's entirely down to who you think won the first round. I still think Hendricks won 48-47, taking the first, second and fourth rounds, but the silliness of the system leaves it open to a title retention not being completely out of the question.

 

Dana's flipping out though, it's awesome. He hates the judges, he hates Nevada, he hates the 10-9 points system, he hates everything right now.

 

[video=youtube;fe_UMCY4jdI]

 

Also, I was stunned to see the amount of people on Twitter who think the championship advantage is a real rule. People were defending the decision by saying that to win the title by decision, you have to win convincingly, and, if it's a close fight, there's an official rule that the champion always retains. Which is complete nonsense.

Edited November 17, 2013 by John Hancock

[Evil Gringo 279]

I had Hendricks winning as well but having watched the fight again today on good old Sky+ I noticed that he may have tapped out at the start of round 1.

 

If you can go back and look at when GSP ducks in and takes him down - he secures an arm in choke and rolls to the mount and whilst Mario is on the other side it looks like Hendricks tapped three times on GSP's thigh - seconds before the hold is lost and the fight continues.

 

From there on GSP gets pretty battered, another unconvincing win much like everyone he has had since the ACL injury.

 

Sidenote: Surely Kosh has to be cut from the roster now? That's three straight and I can only think of Dan Hardy surviving three straight losses.

[Guest John Hancock]

Dana says Kos isn't cut, pretty much admitting it's because he has a boner for TUF 1 guys, but he also said Kos might be retiring anyway, so it doesn't matter.

[Guest The Beltster]

Just re watched it, to me, that definitely wasn't a tap, looked like a general positioning of his hands to keep balance and try and roll out. I wouldn't have considered that a tap if I was the ref and saw it to be honest.

[Evil Gringo 279]

I was unsure if it was or it wasn't as no one and I mean no one bar me, my girlfriend and my friend seemed to pick up on it at all, even the commentators.

 

But it looked more of a tap then the one Sonnen did when Anderson beat him with the triangle at the end of their first fight so it had me thinking.

 

Question is though, bad calls aside were does this leave the UFC? They are putting on way too much programming with all the fight nights and UFC on Fox shows meaning possible match up's that could be built to draw are just being tossed out there. Are they becoming over exposed? There is no possible fight at heavyweight for Cain right now really unless Jones moves up to that weight for me as everyone else is on a much lesser plain.

 

Likewise at 170 who is there for GSP to fight should the rematch with Hendricks go ahead and he wins? Middleweight still has some life in it if Silva loses his rematch because we could have Lyoto v Weidman but if Silva does win Lyoto will not fight him.

 

Couple this with the fact there is really no more big promotions out there for fighters to cross over from and provide fresh competition the question is has the UFC, with its last true meal ticket being exposed in such a manner, reached a tipping point?

[Guest The Beltster]

Weidman isn't flaking another win over Silva, lightning isn't striking twice there. Silva will make Weidman look terrible and take back his belt, then he can rematch with the resurging Vitor. Weidman can fight Lyoto. GSP vs Hendricks rematch. Cain has Werdum next, not great but Barnett after which is something, plus if Overeem picks up a win and looks good in his next fight they could build him into something with good promotion. Jones and Glover should be good leading to the Jones/Gus rematch.

 

I think they can get through 2014 without a problem but they need to build some new stars quite desperately. Conor McGreggor is on his way.

[Evil Gringo 279]

Thing is those matches should be headline events for six or so ppv broadcasts. But given the amount of programming they now have to fill with Fight Nights and FOX1 shows those matches could well be all thrown out and done by the middle of 2014.

 

Plus unless someone knocks Ronda off her pretty little perch soon they will have to expand the women's divisions to include other weight classes before that gets stale.

[Guest The Beltster]

They are bringing in a 125lb womens division or 115lb last I heard. Thing is, with the Fight Nights and the FS1 stuff, they will probably just keep putting out really lame shows (star power wise) like Kennedy vs Natal and save the big fights for PPV's

[Evil Gringo 279]

Vitor v Henderson was a Fight Night - that should have been at the very least either a co-main on FOX1 or third from the top on a PPV. Despite it's rather quick conclusion.

[Guest Frank Botch]

Here's Meltzer from the board

 

The first 11 people I spoke with after the fight, 8 had GSP 48-47 3 had Hendricks 48-47 (Joe Silva, Dave Doyle and Jeremy Botter), and Silva and Botter I spoke with at the press conference so 8 of the first 9 were GSP. All in the same row. In fact, in our row, only right after when we were all talking, only Doyle had Hendricks.

 

When Dana went on his rant, everyone went silent but **** it, it came down to round one which could have gone either way. Save the robbery stuff for real robberies. When it was over, one person after another came up to me saying they had it the same way. Only two people had the guts to say it publicly, me and Todd.

 

Johny's corner did him a great disservice. Anyone with a brain could have seen the first round was close and they should have told him he needed to finish strong. They told him he had it in the bag and it cost him.

 

Thinking back round one had all those Hendricks elbows which did a fair bit of damage, he probably should've took it in fairness, the anybody with a brain crack is uncalled for really. I had also wondered if the press who had it for GSP were too cowardly to raise their hands while Dana was there. I mean he made good points on Nevada but it just shows the trashy quality of MMA journalists that they straight up clapped this guy and were hollering for him. Pathetic really.

 

Also every fighter on earth had it for Hendricks:

 

http://www.mmafighting.com/2013/11/17/5113052/ufc-167-in-tweets-pros-score-controversial-georges-st-pierre-vs-johny

[Guest John Hancock]

Every single MMA journalist (other than Helwani) completely loses there testicles when they get face to face with absolutely anyone remotely connected to the UFC, let alone Dana, it's embarrassing, they're all complete hacks.

[Guest Jack]

Alvarez gave it to GSP, but blamed it on how shitty the 10-9 scoring system is. He has a point. Everyone agrees that Hendricks won 2 and 4 and GSP won 3 and 5 and, whilst Hendricks obviously smashed GSP to bits overall, the stupid scoring system means that doesn't matter and it's entirely down to who you think won the first round. I still think Hendricks won 48-47, taking the first, second and fourth rounds, but the silliness of the system leaves it open to a title retention not being completely out of the question.

The system would work a lot better if judges started giving more 10-10 and 10-8 rounds. If a guy simply wins a round, then 10-9 works but if one fighter is completely dominant in a round, then that should be a 10-8 to reflect his dominance. If a round is extremely close though, then a 10-10 is probably appropriate, but judges seem to be pressured into scoring it for one guy even if neither fighter deserved to win or lose it. For whatever reason, judges seem to insist on scoring every round 10-9, regardless of whether it was tight or one-sided and I think that's part of the problem. Fighter A could dominate Fighter B in the first round but narrowly lose the second because of a leg kick in the final moments, and if that's the case, should the scoring be 19-19? I don't think so.

 

Also, I was stunned to see the amount of people on Twitter who think the championship advantage is a real rule. People were defending the decision by saying that to win the title by decision, you have to win convincingly, and, if it's a close fight, there's an official rule that the champion always retains. Which is complete nonsense.

Agreed again. I hate that nonsense that people churn out after their fighter deserves to lose; a contender doesn't need to dominate the champion to take his belt, he just has to beat them. I'm not sure where people are coming from when they argue against that. I understand arguments like "the champion has more fans so his work may get more noticed by the judges" or whatever, but that's something different.

[Guest John Hancock]

My general rule is it's normally a 10-9. If a shitty referee could have believably stopped it, it's a 10-8, if the referee f*cked up by not stopping it, it's a 10-7. That's how I ended up scored Jones/Gus a draw, because I gave Jones a 10-8 somewhere. That shouldn't be the system though, I agree with you completely. I'd love to see a system in which GSP/Hendricks fight goes 10-10/8-10/10-9/8-10/10-9 for Hendricks to win 48-46, that seems much more fair to me.

 

EDIT: Of course, that said, I still have Hendricks winning 48-47 (10-9/10-9/9-10/10-9/10-9) under the current system.

Edited November 17, 2013 by John Hancock

[Guest The Beltster]

F*ck the 10-point must system and **** points systems in general, its a fight, whoever got the shit kicked out of him the most should be the loser, so lets use the common sense system. I've never seen 2 guys have a fight in real life, one land 10 weak shots and cause no damage and one land 3 devastating shots which f*ck the other guy up, and the 10-shot landing guy wins. Ridiculous.

[Chris2K 176]

There have been people saying this is the worst decision ever, but it's really not. It just comes down to one round really, as opposed to decisions like Rua/Machida 1 which was just insanity.

[Guest John Hancock]

No way is it the worst ever, they only got one round wrong, there's been fights where the judge's got every round wrong. Phan vs. Garcia comes to mind as a really horrifically bad call, probably the worst I've ever seen. Shogan/Machida I wasn't as bad because neither of them really did anything.

 

Meltzer has tweeted that, in round 1 of GSP/Hendricks, Hendricks had the most strikes, the most significant strikes, and they tied for takedowns.