Georges St. Pierre

St-Pierre will defend his welterweight title against Dan Hardy on March 27, 2010 at UFC 111 which will take place in Newark, NJ.

St-Pierre claims that his idol and inspiration to fight comes from his long-time coach, Ashwin Balu.

Georges St. Pierre

A scheduled bout between Mike Swick and Martin Kampmann would have determined the number 1 contender to the UFC Welterweight Championship. In early September, Swick pulled out of the fight due to an injury, effectively cancelling the title elimination aspect of the fight. After Martin Kampmann lost to Paul Daley at UFC 103, a fight between Swick and Dan Hardy was announced for UFC 105, with the winner, Dan Hardy, earning number 1 contendership to St-Pierre’s title.

Georges St. Pierre

Next St-Pierre fought and defeated number-one contender, Thiago Alves, at UFC 100. Alves showed promise on his feet standing up in the fight, but St-Pierre’s wrestling offensive, endurance and ground control proved too much for the challenger, and put St-Pierre en route to a unanimous decision victory, despite suffering a pulled groin muscle in the fourth round. While St. Pierre said in his post fight interview that the injury was sustained in the third round, he later said on his blog that the injury in fact occurred in the fourth round. On July 18, 2009, it was revealed that St-Pierre’s groin injury wouldn’t require surgery.

Georges St. Pierre Defending the title

The win over Fitch set up one of the most anticipated rematches in UFC history, as BJ Penn stepped into the octagon after the fight to essentially challenge St-Pierre to a rematch of their bout at UFC 58 in 2006, which ended in a split-decision victory for St-Pierre. The rematch occurred on January 31, 2009, at UFC 94. The first round of the fight was somewhat even, with Penn exercising elusive head movement, fast hands, and good take-down defense, thwarting all of St-Pierre’s take-down attempts while both exchanged punches. In the ensuing three rounds, however, Penn turned out a lackluster performance. St-Pierre scored his first take-down of the night midway through the second round, and by the end of the round Penn was visibly tired. At the start of round three, St-Pierre landed a “superman punch” that bloodied Penn’s nose and shortly took Penn down again. From that point on, St-Pierre took Penn down almost at will, repeatedly passed Penn’s renowned guard, and persistently punished the Hawaiian with a ground-and-pound attack. Penn later admitted that he couldn’t recall anything that happened during the 3rd and 4th rounds because “I was probably borderline knocked out or something.” At the end of the fourth round, after more of St-Pierre’s ground-and-pound onslaught, Penn’s corner man Jason Parillo requested that the referee stop the fight. After the fight, Penn failed to attend the post-fight press conference due to having stayed in the hospital. Phil Nurse, was seen after round 1 rubbing St-Peirre’s back and shoulders, which, the Penn camp claimed, was Nurse applying Vaseline to GSP and what ultimately led to Penn’s defeat. The UFC does not allow Vaseline to be applied to the back. It was formally investigated by the UFC and Nevada State Athletic Commission upon the request of the Penn camp, including a letter Penn’s mother wrote to Dana White about the incident. Upon investigation, all claims were dismissed as false and warranted no disciplinary action or further investigation.

St-Pierre

defeated Jon Fitch by unanimous decision with scores of 50–43, 50–44, 50–44 at UFC 87, to retain his UFC welterweight title. He dominated Fitch, scoring multiple devastating strikes and taking the former Purdue wrestling captain down seemingly at will. After the fight St-Pierre spoke to Fitch about the growth that his own loss had prompted and said that Fitch’s experience should be no different.