There seems to be conflicting views on the past weekends Lightweight title bout even between the mma statistic and analysis sites Fightmetric & Compustrike. Both tabulated the same very close fight between lightweight legend BJ Penn and the newly minted champ Frankie Edgar. Having rewatched the fight myself it’s still really close with every single round being highly competitive 10-9 only rounds the whole fight through. While Penn did land what seemed to be the harder, cleaner shots, Edgar could be seen as the busier fighter with his high mobility and calculated aggression.

Edgar clearly wanted it more, with Penn being content on waiting for countering opportunities and not cutting off the cage or event hinting at taking the fight to the ground, its easy to see why a judge would give the New Jersey native the nod. Another aspect of the fight that can not be tabulated by a statistical rubric is the perception of Penn and how it might of worked against him. All things considered this was a champion who had until UFC 112 had only been defeated once at lightweight and had finished every opponent since he won the title. Factoring that with Edgar coming in as a +500 underdog who didn’t get eviscerated in the first round and was able to hang with arguably the best boxer in mma in a striking exchange. You can entertain the idea of a judge seeing Edgar as the victor based solely on him not losing or looking particularly bad.

All in all I am glad Frankie won, but the fight was so close I still have doubts he is the best lightweight in the UFC, much less the world.

Now onto the other title fight, I will keep this one short since there is a veritable plethora of opinions on the middleweight champ, whose to blame, who does he fight next, why should we care, etc… This is how it breaks down in my eyes:

The ball is in Dana White’s court. He has to put Silva in fights against opponents who will try to beat him. Whether it is at middleweight, light heavy or heavyweight he has to face fighters who will attempt to hurt him. Demian Maia is a top tier middleweight, but we have to remember his shot at the title was the result of a perfect storm of injury’s and medical suspensions taking away first the intended opponent Vitor Belfort and then the #1 contender in Chael Sonnen. The match up of superstar striker vs decorated and feared bjj practitioner would have been compelling were it not one of the most tired match ups in mma and a repeat of Andersons last title defense against Thales Leites.

Contrary to popular belief I think Silva has now elevated himself into being a huge ppv draw or is on his way to being one. Granted he took the long way around to getting there, the UFC now has another heel champ to go along with their current heavyweight titleholder Brock Lesnar. Instead of taking things personally the UFC brass should be accommodating and put Silva through a gauntlet of super fights until he can stand no more. And the next time one of his opponents is unable to fight, just scrap the fight unless someone begs to take The Spider on. When Silva doesn’t feel like he is in danger or threatened he acts out, so only put him in fights where he will never have that option.

For those MMA statistic buffs out there here is Fightmetrics take on two particular aspects of the welterweight champions performance.

We’ve got the stats posted for the championship fight between Georges St. Pierre and Dan Hardy. While St. Pierre was unable to finish Hardy, the grappling clinic he put on set three new career highs for GSP:

11 takedowns landed (previous high, 10 vs. Alves)
6 submission attempts (previous high, 5 vs. Koscheck)
26 positional improvements (previous high, 14 vs. Miller)

Less impressive was the total number of heavy strikes landed by GSP. After landing a career-high 106 HiPer Strikes against Jon Fitch, St. Pierre’s striking tally has declined in each of his last three fights:

49 vs. Penn (in four rounds)
41 vs. Alves
35 vs. Hardy

Link

The interwebs have been on fire over the performance by Georges. Yet again we had St. Pierre controlling and dictating the pace of the entire fight while still struggling to put his opponent away. Even with 2 very deep submissions in the 1st (armbar) and 4th (kimura) rounds the challenger in Dan Hardy was able to miraculously survive to the bell. According to the breakdown of his past title defenses there has been an increase in Georges takedowns and reliance on his most valuable weapon (i.e. his wrestling) and a decrease in his highly technical but disadvantageous striking.

As far as I’m concerned if its not broke don’t fix it, the champ should be forced to change his gameplan by a worthy challnger not by angry keyboard warriors. Until someone finds an answer for GSP’s groundgame he should use it as much as he damn well pleases. The only critique and or observation I have is that as far as submissions are concerned:

Chokes > Joint locks/hyper extension subs

No matter how tough you are, every human needs to breathe and have blood flowing to their brain. Granted GSP did go for multiple rear naked and arm triangles to no avail a triangle or guillotine would have been nice. But seeing as both of these submissions would put Georges on his back I can understand why the champ would avoid them. When its all said and done, whether you are a fan or hater. GSP is going to be the champ until someone can solve the puzzle of his wrestling or he vacates the title for the 185lb division. The latter being less likely as far as I’m concerned.