Georges St. Pierre is a true mixed martial artist. If you have a hole in your game, he'll exploit it.
The UFC's welterweight champ has wrestled in many of his recent victories. Tonight, when he faced a right-hand dominant wrestler, GSP went back to his boxing.
The French-Canadian rolled to unanimous decision victory, 50-45 on all cards, leaving the American looking grotesque after the main event at UFC 124 in Montreal.
St. Pierre (21-2, 16-2 UFC) hasn't lost a fight since 2007, winning 14-of-15. He successfully defended his UFC title belt for the fifth time. This was his second win over Koscheck (15-5, 13-5 UFC).
"My first fight with him, I wanted to beat him with the wrestling," St. Pierre said at the UFC 124 postfight press conference. "This fight I wanted to beat him with the boxing."
"I wanted to switch the strategy. Do something unexpected, so the opponent doesn't know what's coming at him. Mixed martial arts is like a chess game. You want to play strategy."
Using his spot as a coach on Season 12 of "The Ultimate Fighter," Koscheck whipped Canadian and MMA fans into a frenzy in anticipation of the fight. He embraced the heel role by talking trash throughout the reality show, and during the lead up to the fight.
The super polite St. Pierre held his tongue until the last two days, when he finally said he was going to kick Koscheck's ass and never wanted to hear from him again.
At the end of the scrap, the fighter's embraced and spoke for a few seconds.
One would assume, Koscheck gave St. Pierre his due. When St. Pierre spoke with UFC analyst Joe Rogan in the Octagon, he asked the crowd to give Koscheck credit for his toughness. He also explained that Koscheck was only hyping up the fight with all the smack talk.
GSP set the tone early by using a piston-like jab. He landed 58-of-140 (40 percent) jabs.
"I don't know if I've ever seen someone take that much damage from a jab in the first round of a fight in MMA," said UFC president Dana White.
The approach was very reminiscent of how boxing heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko dominates his opponents. The fight also possessed a gross similarity to what Manny Pacquiao did to Antonio Margarito last month.
Margarito had his orbital bone broken by "Pac-Man" in the fourth round of that fight.
There's no official word, but it appeared that Koscheck suffered a similar injury in the first round. After just five minutes of fighting, Koscheck's right eye was almost completely shut.
St. Pierre tried for nine takedowns, but was only good on three. And in those cases, Koscheck got to his feet quickly. He may have been better off staying down.
With his vision clearly diminished, St. Pierre used his face as target practice. In rounds four and five, St. Pierre landed pretty much any left jab or hook he attempted. GSP outlanded Koscheck 21-1 in the fourth and by the end of the fight, the punch stats bordered on unbelievable for a fight that went the distance.
Koscheck got outlanded 136-30, and FightMetric counted significant strikes as 110 to 16 for St. Pierre. Compustrike said it was GSP 143-30 overall.
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