Georges St. Pierre Does It Again, Dominates Jake Shields at UFC 129 at LinesMaker

Georges St. Pierre Does It Again, Dominates Jake Shields at UFC 129

The crowd in Toronto on Sat­ur­day night was unprece­dented for the UFC, with 55,000 fans more than dou­bling the promotion’s atten­dance record. But while the fans them­selves were some­thing new, the man they came to see did the same old thing: UFC wel­ter­weight cham­pion Georges St. Pierre once again won a thor­oughly dom­i­nant unan­i­mous deci­sion vic­tory, defeat­ing Jake Shields in the main event at UFC 129.

The judges scored it 50–45, 48–47 and 48–47 for St. Pierre, and although those score cards were closer than the usual for St. Pierre, they rep­re­sented what has become com­mon­place for the UFC champ: He wins deci­sions eas­ily, rather than putting oppo­nents away spec­tac­u­larly. St. Pierre said after­ward that he wasn’t happy with his own performance.

“I couldn’t deliver much,” St. Pierre said. “I’m sorry for the fans. I wanted to make a knock­out or a submission.”

---

---

In the first minute of the first round Shields caught a St. Pierre kick and briefly appeared to be in posi­tion for a take­down, but Shields man­aged to hop around on one foot and get him­self free. From there St. Pierre showed how supe­rior his strik­ing is than Shields’ repeat­edly land­ing jabs that backed Shields up, and get­ting cre­ative by going for some spin­ning back kicks. It was clear through the first round that St. Pierre had a big advan­tage stand­ing up.

In the sec­ond round St. Pierre made fre­quent use of over­hand right hands, and Shields didn’t have much of an answer for them. None of St. Pierre’s punches knocked Shields down, but sev­eral of them landed hard, and Shields was clearly affected. Shields did almost noth­ing to St. Pierre, as the fight con­tin­ued to be fought just on the feet, exactly where St. Pierre wanted it.

The third round was more of the same until the final 30 sec­onds, when St. Pierre sur­prised Shields by going for a take­down of his own and knock­ing Shields on his back. That was a sur­prise, as Shields’ only hope of a vic­tory was pulling off a sub­mis­sion on the ground, but it showed just how com­fort­able St. Pierre was feeling.

At the start of the fourth St. Pierre put Shields on his back again, although this time St. Pierre quickly stood back up to stay out of dan­ger. St. Pierre then waited a cou­ple min­utes with­out doing a whole lot before land­ing a hard left kick to the head that knocked Shields down. But instead of going in for the kill at that point, St. Pierre was con­tent to play it safe for the rest of the round. Shields did man­age to land a hard straight right hand that blood­ied St. Pierre’s nose later in the round, but St. Pierre def­i­nitely won the fourth.

By the fifth round it was clear that St. Pierre was con­tent to take an easy deci­sion, and that had many of the 55,000 pro-GSP fans in Toronto boo­ing: They came to see a brawl, and St. Pierre had decided to win a tac­ti­cal bat­tle on points, not a blood­bath or a knockout.

But the fans cheered St. Pierre in the end, as they should: He’s a mixed mar­tial artist, not an action star, and he did what he always does: He just won.

Related Posts:

• Georges St-Pierre Vs. Nick Diaz? Hur­dles Exist, but UFC Pres­i­dent Open to Idea
• No Cruise Con­trol for Georges St-Pierre
• UFC 130 Main Event Results — Jack­son Roll; Ram­page Deci­sions Hamill
• Frankie Edgar: From Under­dog to Champion
• Jake Shields – The Takeover

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•