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Originally Posted by Strange Famous
ah, youre probably right - I posted that when I was drunk. But I do think, from the limited fights I watched on youtube when I was arguing all this that St Pierre lacks gameness and heart. He struck me as a bully boy fighter... strong and powerful and destructive, but not prepared mentally to really come through a war.
Whatever the pro's and con's of MMA is, its a much faster and more high impact event than a boxing match. Either way most fights are done in three rounds (I searched on wiki and Pierre has never been longer than 3 rounds in a UFC match).
If someone takes a fighter like that into the late rounds in a real war, thats when they get found out often. (like Douglas vs Tyson... Tyson went on a run and knocked a lot of people down quickly and bullied them: Douglas didnt go down and Mike didnt have an answer)
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As far as St Pierre's heart goes, I think you are wrong. I really do think that losing that first fight against Serra has changed St Pierre and made him a much better fighter mentally. He came into a fight unprepared and got schooled. His fights since that one he has looked absolutely dominant. I think that getting beat (badly) knocked some sense into him and sometimes that's exactly what a fighter needs to become better.
As far as stamina goes, well for one the max number of rounds in the UFC is five in a championship fight and three in a non-title fight. So not going more than three rounds isn't surprising. Really a five round fight in the UFC is rare, and IMO often boring. It's usually someone like Tim Sylvia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Silvia) who really just tries to get the match to go to the judges knowing that the judges will likely award the champ the win (to be the champ, you gotta beat the champ mentality) rather than actually trying to win the fight.
Anyway I'm getting off topic here, basically when it comes to GSP and conditioning, when you consider the shape that he keeps himself in I doubt that stamina is a real issue for him. Remember he took the fight against Matt Hughes (when Matt Serra was injured in training) with less than a months notice when most fighters get three months and he looked in better shape than anyone else on the card because his day-to-day training schedule is crazy intense, much less when he's training for a fight.