Georges St Pierre dismantles Jon Fitch

Chris Parry

Vancouver Sun

Sunday, August 10, 2008

CREDIT: John Mahoney/Canwest News Service Georges St. Pierre rests against the ropes following a sparring session at the Legion Fight Club in Victoriaville.

It took about 90 seconds for Montreal's Georges St Pierre to show a sell out crowd of 15,000 and a massive pay-per-view TV audience that he wasn't going to lose his UFC world welterweight title to unbeaten John Fitch.

Coming in to the main event of UFC 87, there were plenty of people willing to pontificate that the Canadian champion might not respond well to the pressure of a title defense. After all, the last time St Pierre was asked to defend a belt, he lost to a rank underdog.

But that talk was quickly silenced as the man they call GSP dodged a thigh kick and planted a huge right hand on the challenger's chin, dropping him to the mat and opening a big cut under his left eye.

And it only got worse for Fitch from there.

But in what was a classic example of why the sport of mixed martial arts is taking off so rapidly, as St Pierre went in for the kill, peppering the American with blows to the head, the expected TKO never came. Seemingly unable to mount much of an offense, Fitch simply refused to cede, wrapped the champion up in knots, and eventually even mounted a little offense in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

But only a little.

The flow of the match was fairly consistent; St Pierre would crack Fitch in the face with a snapping kick or a brutal left jab, Fitch's legs would buckle underneath him, but then he'd straighten up, defend like crazy as his head cleared, and start swinging again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

St Pierre hit his opponent with punches, knees, elbows, spinning back kicks, roundhouse kicks, knee lifts to the jaw, even spinning backhand chops. The only thing he didn't hit the challenger with was a socket wrench, though chances are Fitch would have shaken that off too.

If points were allocated for knockdowns, the defending champion would have won by a cricket score, but Fitch's determination to stand under a barrage brought nearly as much acclaim as the dismantling laid upon him by the champion. In fact, as St Pierre started to run out of gas and resorted to defensive grappling and clock watching in the later rounds, a bloodied and beaten Fitch began to look just a little dangerous - as if he saw himself as just a twisted arm away from stealing an unlikely win.

But in the end, it wasn't even close. St Pierre was so explosive, so accurate and so balanced in his attack that all Fitch could really do was hang tough, take the blows, and hope for an opening that seldom came.

As the champion was announced the winner by unanimous decision, St Pierre dropped to his knees in front of Fitch and extended a hand of respect, a move that was quickly matched by the challenger, leaving the pair sitting in the middle of the octagon, chatting away like new best friends. You'd hardly know they had spent the previous half hour trying to rip each other's heads off.

Though the crowd was almost to a man in St Pierre's corner at the commencement of the fight, Fitch's refusal to stay down earned him loud respect from the crowd - and the guy who beat him to a pulp.

"This loss will be great for him," said St Pierre afterwards. "It will only make him better."

God help the rest of the UFC if it does - if these guys aren't two of the best pound for pound competitors in any fighting sport out there, it's hard to imagine who is.

After the match, lightweight world champion BJ Penn came to the ring and challenged GSP to meet him up a weight class for a title bout, a prospect that St Pierre was happy to agree to and which, if it happens, would be one of the biggest fights in UFC history. That said, the idea of St Pierre/Fitch 2 would certainly draw a similarly large audience, even if only to answer the question, "Can Jon Fitch be knocked out?"