Sunday, August 23, 2009

St. Pierre vs. Silva: Potential Reality or a Dream?

By Roy Ferris

There seem to be a few great MMA fights each year, highly anticipated. Generally speaking, there's still a favorite in each fight, as fans know who to expect to win. Once in a blue moon, the type of epic fight comes along that has a feel of the "Frazier/Ali" hype to it.

Looking at the current state of the UFC, middleweight and welterweight champs Anderson Silva and Georges St. Pierre have both defeated all of their recent competition with relative ease, leaving many fans to ponder how they can do something interesting from here.

Once "GSP" and Thiago Alves' fight came to a close during UFC 100 it was obvious "GSP" had manhandled Alves and was going to walk away with yet another dominant victory. He did. St-Pierre's next opponent will be the winner of Mike Swick and Martin Kampman at UFC 103. Two guys who've fought their way to the top of the division and one will get a shot at Georges St-Pierre. Although both men are very capable MMA fighters it's really hard to say either of them have a chance at defeating the champ. St-Pierre is simply in another class of fighter. When the Swick v St-Pierre or Kampman v St-Pierre fight comes and goes we'll probably all be left with a burning question, whose next?

After Anderson Silva and Forrest Griffin's "fight" at UFC 101 this past Saturday some questions were raised. What was Anderson Silva going to do next? He had just defeated former light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin in an embarrassing fashion. Knocking down Forrest twice before offering to help him up, then seconds later knocking Forrest down for a third and final time. Before the fight Forrest said something like "you may beat me, but nobody will ever break me." Really Forrest? He ran out of the octagon and then the building. Avoiding the post fight press conference and has still not released an official statement. I think broken is a nice word, words like crippled, shattered and disintegrated come to mind.

Silva will await Dan Henderson for his next fight, according to the UFC. Henderson is coming off a nice win against Michael Bisbing, which in and of itself got him another shot against Silva. Still, many are discounting Henderson's chances and predict an easy win for Silva. And where does Silva go from there?

One could speculate that Silva might try his hand at the light heavyweight title with a fight against Lyoto Machida, but this simply won't happen. The two are former training partners and very close friends, and have publicly stated that they won't fight each other.

At this point, it looks like both St. Pierre and Anderson are at their peaks, with no one posing any kind of threat to the two. Interest may wane due to the lack of competitiveness in their fights, so why not put the two against each other?

As for who would come out on top, well, that's the beauty of a fight like this. No one really knows. It's been a while since we've seen a super fight, and I think the UFC is due.

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