GSP, the new WW champ!

[bigred389]

GSP was using a lot of lead leg low kicks with no quick switch ie not Thai style (the two "groin" shots as example). Does anyone know what his training background is? I remember reading he had some TKD in his background, but I'm wondering if he has any Savate - him being French and all. The knockout kick was certainly Thai, but classic Savate in set-up :-)

The whole night was a good UFC. Even the undercard fight after the GSP Hughes fight was pretty good...

He actually has Kyokushin in his background.

Also note he loves the spinning back kicks.

[SamuraiGuy]

We'll seeing as how these are my two favorite fighters by far... and seeing as how I'm a voice of significance (lol still funny) around here... heres my thoughts.


30 Seconds into the fight, I looked at my friend and went "holy shit Georges is gonna fucking kill him"....

I just knew it.... before the fight I wasnt sure, thought GSP had the edge... but couldnt ever count Matt Hughes out, it wasnt that I couldnt see GSP winning, I just couldnt see hughes losing.

Anyone of you who says Hughes is a paper champion, or I read someone said he isnt top 10, or any bashing of him whatsoever, is a fucking moron and should quit the sport. Go watch Nascar you fucking ignoramous. Whether you like Hughes personality, style, or anything else or not, how the **** can you say he's not a good fighter. Give that man some fucking respect, he's the greatest MMA champion EVER, Fedor could surpass him, GSP could surpass him, but dont fucking knock him.

Now here's the reason I think GSP won when no one else could... When have you ever seen a Matt Hughes fight where he didnt get the take down. Sure BJ stuffed it in the second fight, but eventually Hughes did get the take down. Other then his loss to Penn and his loss to GSP when have you EVER seen him not get the take down. Whether he's losing or not, he always got the takedown. Hughes has fought better strikers than him, but he's always got that takedown, that was the difference maker right there.

[Dale B.]

GSP looked down thus faking the shot and getting MH to lower his hands as ready to bump or sprawl then kicked. That's why it was so wide open. Good job to GSP. I was not impressed with MH's performance.

[bigred389]

We'll seeing as how these are my two favorite fighters by far... and seeing as how I'm a voice of significance (lol still funny) around here... heres my thoughts.


30 Seconds into the fight, I looked at my friend and went "holy shit Georges is gonna fucking kill him"....

I just knew it.... before the fight I wasnt sure, thought GSP had the edge... but couldnt ever count Matt Hughes out, it wasnt that I couldnt see GSP winning, I just couldnt see hughes losing.

Anyone of you who says Hughes is a paper champion, or I read someone said he isnt top 10, or any bashing of him whatsoever, is a fucking moron and should quit the sport. Go watch Nascar you fucking ignoramous. Whether you like Hughes personality, style, or anything else or not, how the **** can you say he's not a good fighter. Give that man some fucking respect, he's the greatest MMA champion EVER, Fedor could surpass him, GSP could surpass him, but dont fucking knock him.

Now here's the reason I think GSP won when no one else could... When have you ever seen a Matt Hughes fight where he didnt get the take down. Sure BJ stuffed it in the second fight, but eventually Hughes did get the take down. Other then his loss to Penn and his loss to GSP when have you EVER seen him not get the take down. Whether he's losing or not, he always got the takedown. Hughes has fought better strikers than him, but he's always got that takedown, that was the difference maker right there.

Well in BJs case unless that takedown caused his injury that isn't why he really lost...
But I agree, Jens Pulver's said it, and after watching the first GSP/MH and the last BJ Penn fight I had to agree, the formula to beating Hughes is sprawl and brawl.
Hughes has terrible standup and it hasn't exactly been a secret for awhile but in previous fights he'd bull his way out of trouble with a takedown...he had trouble when he didn't have that as an escape option. It was a little bit like watching Crocop or Liddell actually to some extent.

[SamuraiGuy]

Well in BJs case unless that takedown caused his injury that isn't why he really lost...
But I agree, Jens Pulver's said it, and after watching the first GSP/MH and the last BJ Penn fight I had to agree, the formula to beating Hughes is sprawl and brawl.
Hughes has terrible standup and it hasn't exactly been a secret for awhile but in previous fights he'd bull his way out of trouble with a takedown...he had trouble when he didn't have that as an escape option. It was a little bit like watching Crocop or Liddell actually to some extent.

Whether he got the takedown because BJ was injured or not... he still got the takedown, thats my point.

[B78NY]

GSP was using a lot of lead leg low kicks with no quick switch ie not Thai style (the two "groin" shots as example). Does anyone know what his training background is? I remember reading he had some TKD in his background, but I'm wondering if he has any Savate - him being French and all. The knockout kick was certainly Thai, but classic Savate in set-up :-)

The whole night was a good UFC. Even the undercard fight after the GSP Hughes fight was pretty good...

He definatly has a TKD backround. You can tell by his spinning kicks. I believe he trains muy thai, jiu-jitsu, and submission wrestling.

[J-Luck]

Sorry bro but he did say he trained it over and over again...setting up the kick to the face with the leg kicks.

Listen to the interview again. He said he hadn't expected to land the kick.

[J-Luck]

LMAO!!!

Honestly, i didnt see this fight going down the way it did. I thought Hughes would have been able to take him down. I didnt think he was gonna stand with him. As you could see in Hughes' last fight with Penn, his stand up is not that good. Yea, that kick came out of now where, but Hughes was getting drilled heavily before that. But St. Pierre threw that kick and he wanted it to hurt, if it didnt land, he was just going to blast Hughes with more punches. Matt Hughes is not a striker. Though he has improved a great deal, he will never own in the stand up(unless it was against BJ Penn with a severe rib injury and an empty gas tank). Im not taking anything away from Matt, but his stand up is bad(for a champion) and he'll just get owned in the rubber match.

I hope Hughes doesnt retire now(he said he was gonna fight like 2 more fights and retire.) He still has a lot of fights left in him.

I agree his standup is not there with GSP, but, his boxing(he'll never be an all around striker) improves every sing fight. Don't believe me? Watch his last 6-7 fights one after another. You'll see. Assuming he continues to get better(training with some pretty good strikers at the Militech camp) he'll be able to strike with BJ and GSP before he retires.

[J-Luck]

Exactly dude, J-Tard cant afford the pay per view so he got the shortened interivew off you tube, GSP said he looked down to fake a leg kick so Matt would either lower his hands to block or lower his head to sprawl if he thought GSP was going to shoot. either way, he set the move up, it was a far cry from an 'accident'. But the 'hughes nuthugger' groupies have to say it was lucky that Matt lost, when in reality this was going to happen and should have happend a long time ago., hughes isnt and never was that good, he was an average MMA fighter at best. and GSP showed us once again, after Penn did twice, that fact. I just wish Diego was the one to spank that arrogant over rated prick hughes

Ummm... first off... why are you making fun of poor people... not gonna win you any fans here dumbass.

Second, I watch the whole UFC from my living room, so don't give me that rhetorical bullshit, you're too stupid to back up your rhetoric, so you come up with meaningless insults.

I'm telling you what he said... dumbass.

I'm not a Hughes nuthugger... GSP is one of my top 10 fav fighters... again, insults to mask the lack of quality to the quantity of what you say.

If he was only an average fighter he would have never gotten that far. Results speak.

[J-Luck]

We'll seeing as how these are my two favorite fighters by far... and seeing as how I'm a voice of significance (lol still funny) around here... heres my thoughts.


30 Seconds into the fight, I looked at my friend and went "holy shit Georges is gonna fucking kill him"....

I just knew it.... before the fight I wasnt sure, thought GSP had the edge... but couldnt ever count Matt Hughes out, it wasnt that I couldnt see GSP winning, I just couldnt see hughes losing.

Anyone of you who says Hughes is a paper champion, or I read someone said he isnt top 10, or any bashing of him whatsoever, is a fucking moron and should quit the sport. Go watch Nascar you fucking ignoramous. Whether you like Hughes personality, style, or anything else or not, how the **** can you say he's not a good fighter. Give that man some fucking respect, he's the greatest MMA champion EVER, Fedor could surpass him, GSP could surpass him, but dont fucking knock him.

Now here's the reason I think GSP won when no one else could... When have you ever seen a Matt Hughes fight where he didnt get the take down. Sure BJ stuffed it in the second fight, but eventually Hughes did get the take down. Other then his loss to Penn and his loss to GSP when have you EVER seen him not get the take down. Whether he's losing or not, he always got the takedown. Hughes has fought better strikers than him, but he's always got that takedown, that was the difference maker right there.

Couldn't agree more. Tell that to dumbass grappler.

[MasterGrappler]

Hughes was exposed both times by Penn and now GSP destroyed him and showed how bad hughes really was. Who did he beat that was any good? Trigg? LOl, he has zero ground game and got tapped out to an armbar in the ADCC in less than a minute. Newton? hughes squeeked by carlos who was overrated to start with. Hmmmm no many others, he ducked Diego, Diaz, etc, all guys that would have KO'd him just like GSP did. Hughes is done, exposed as a lousy fighter and went out with his ass handed to him, now that was worth the price of admission

[J-Luck]

Hughes was exposed both times by Penn and now GSP destroyed him and showed how bad hughes really was. Who did he beat that was any good? Trigg? LOl, he has zero ground game and got tapped out to an armbar in the ADCC in less than a minute. Newton? hughes squeeked by carlos who was overrated to start with. Hmmmm no many others, he ducked Diego, Diaz, etc, all guys that would have KO'd him just like GSP did. Hughes is done, exposed as a lousy fighter and went out with his ass handed to him, now that was worth the price of admission

I'm sorry, him and GSP are 1-1 dumbass... hardly proves anything. Penn didn't expose him, He stuffed the takedown, sure... he got the better of the striking, sure. But Hughes also showed he could take Penn down AND showed much improved boxing(as he does every fight) and utilized the jab effectively.

I could go through his whole record, but it's been done on this site before. Wouldn't go through the work for a tool like you though.

Btw... just because he loses to the top two guys does not make him bad or a paper champ. Only an idiot would say that, as you have.

[SamuraiGuy]

First off, J-Luck just disregard mastergrappler, its probably omoplata, or his inbred brother or something. Noone with a brain who isnt trolling, can say Matt Hughes is a bad fighter. The Diaz/Diego comments, especially the Diaz one (what kind of sprawl does Diaz have at all) show you just how much of a troll it is.

Anyway, to all the people wondering, its not Savate or TKD, its Kyuokoshin(sp?) Karate. Hence the headband he wears to every fight with the Japanese flag/symbol thing on it.

[bigred389]

Listen to the interview again. He said he hadn't expected to land the kick.

You talking about in ring after the fight?

Quoting GSP(audio transcription...I have to compensate for crowd noise and his Engleesh ):
"But I knew he was worried for my leg kick...I saw it...so I decide to fake a leg kick, I look down and I kick it at his head so...i practice a lot this move in...in training.

Look, I look down, he expect me to kick down, and boom I hit him on the head, and this is how he was out."

Sorry bud, but it looks like you're wrong on this one. Nothing about not expecting to connect with the kick. And I DVRd the PPV...good audio quality. If you have it recorded go ahead and replay it.

[bigred389]

I'm sorry, him and GSP are 1-1 dumbass... hardly proves anything. Penn didn't expose him, He stuffed the takedown, sure... he got the better of the striking, sure. But Hughes also showed he could take Penn down AND showed much improved boxing(as he does every fight) and utilized the jab effectively.

I could go through his whole record, but it's been done on this site before. Wouldn't go through the work for a tool like you though.

Btw... just because he loses to the top two guys does not make him bad or a paper champ. Only an idiot would say that, as you have.

Well...he didn't lose to Penn in his last fight.

And yeah, losing to GSP does not make anyone a paper champ.

But this was a convincing victory for GSP. Let's be honest...he was imposing his will on Hughes, this fight was not even a contest. He even nearly had him in the first round.
If we go back to their first match, GSP was doing pretty well until the final seconds of the first round, and as is well known by now, at least one judge had that round scored in GSPs favor.

Going back to fight 2.
Hughes had no answer to the leg kicks. I'm fairly certain that getting his legs chopped(eventually he even got swept) had to hurt Hughes badly. If his standup has improved(and it's hard to tell by this fight), having his legs busted may explain why his footwork looked like crap...he almost looked flatfooted in that fight. It would also explain why he didnt' try to take GSP down...GSP controlled distance, and Hughes probably knew a crap shot on GSP would only mean an easy KO for GSP. Honestly, he was just TAKING those leg kicks...he might want to train defending those quite a bit. On the second "groin" shot, I'm pretty sure he just dropped from the pain of the leg kick, not a ding to the cup.
GSP is a high energy striker too, he was pretty much throwing everything at full speed, and was still hopping around like a meth freak. I don't think Hughes has fought any excellent strikers with that level of cardio and takedown defense before.

And honestly, I'd say you're overestimating Hughes standup. I would not say he was utilizing the jab effectively against Penn. And Royce Gracie isn't exactly someone to compare standup with. AND he's been on the (badly) losing sides of striking exchanges in both of this last two fights.

What I would give to Hughes in the rubber match is that he probably knows what he needs to "fix." GSP doesn't have his gameplan quite so clear. But GSP was just so much more dynamic in this fight, with more tools, that I can't really see Hughes taking it in the rematch. Plain and simple, Hughes has had a LONG time to improve his standup. He's also old. It's probably pretty much peaked. Some people just don't "get" it. Either that or he's such a good wrestler he never trained it seriously. Anyway, he's not going to come into the fight ready to trade with GSP OR Penn...both of them are younger and already better. He needs to find out how to takedown GSP...that's what's taken him to success...if he can't do that, he will not beat GSP.