Further thoughts on UFC 167

While we're on the subject of UFC 167 . . .

It's been a while since I've been impressed with Rory MacDonald. The last time I remember liking him was when he suplexed Nate Diaz through the mat three times. But since then?

I mean, I know that MMA guys are going to, as a group, have some tough guy nicknames. How many are called something-something assassin? But the moment I cooled on MacDonald was when he started calling himself “Ares”.

I find it hard to say that MMA fighters oughtta research their silly superhero nicknames, but Ares . . . ? Really?

The Greeks had a number of war gods . . . well, almost all of them, including Aphrodite, had a war aspect. But the least respected of the Olympians was, without a doubt, Ares. Generally, when he appeared at all in Greek mythology, it was to be humiliated. But if you were serious about war, you were probably going to be into Zeus and Athena, maybe Apollo or Hermes. Ares was a pig, brutal and stupid, a bully who ran away if people confronted him. One of his ceremonies was, and I kid you not, involved puppy killing. It's kind of hard to get into a dude whose actual religious ceremonies involved raising a puppy for a year and then killing it. What a asshole.

So, anyone so arrogant to want to call themselves literally a god and then so ignorant as to choose

Arex is going to rub me the wrong way. Then he started walking around in suits and thinking he deserved a title because he was all but crowned long before he got a title shot. He started to come off as a used car salesman, superficially nice but coated in a thin film of slime.

Which is to say, thank you, Ruthless Robbie Lawler. It is good to see you returned to top contention. ATT has been good to you, clearly, balancing your aggression with better control and technique. I totally want to see a title eliminator between Robbie Lawler and Matt Brown. I'm not sure I'd be on Lawler's side because I have something of a man crush on Matt Brown, but it would probably be a hell of a fight.

On the other side of things, I'm still pretty neutral about Johny Hendricks. Sometimes he comes off as really down-to-earth and humble. Other times? Not so much. He recently said that if GSP couldn't handle the pressure of being champion that he should retire and give up the belt.

Well, duh. This whole business with GSP people have been saying he can't quit fighting and keep the belt. It is interesting to note that at no point did GSP say that's what he intended. He said, instead, that he was having a hard time and was stepping back from fighting. Clearly, if he stays away too long, yes, he should be stripped of the belt. We should also bear in mind that Dominick Cruz was out two years and didn't have his belt taken from him. (FWIW, I'm against that. I more or less feel that any champion who doesn't fight for more than a year, whatever the cause, should have the belt taken.)

At the same time, everyone has been casting what's wrong with GSP in psychological terms, which is weird since GSP hasn't said exactly what is going on, except that it's personal. Medical issues are personal, for instance. Indeed, I strongly suspect that GSP's problem is primarily physical, that he's got a bad knee that is probably limiting his training and explosiveness in fights – which is why he's getting hit so much, lately, I think.

But here's the thing, Johny, GSP owes you precisely nothing. He didn't make the decision, after all. He did what he was supposed to do – he showed up for the fight and he fought a tough fight. Just because you and Dana don't like the decision doesn't mean that GSP owes anything to you, not the least little bit. He is well past the point of needing to prove anything to anyone, given that he's the UFC's biggest draw, their winningest fighter with the longest current winning streak and is without doubt the best welterweight in the organization's history. For you to say anything about GSP is fucking arrogant bullshit that makes me hope that GSP spurns you and you take another fight and lose, slide into depression and doubt and get booted from the UFC. Then you'll take a spot in the World Series of Fighting and get knocked out in three fights in a row and retire to Texas in shame and defeat. Your lack of interest in the personal well-being of one of the greatest fighters who has ever lived is, frankly, disgusting and shameful and it makes an absolute mockery of your vocal Christianity. It makes it hard to like you, moves your confidence into arrogance and makes me wish for your defeat and, indeed, humiliation. Just saying.

Why it may be time for GSP to hang up the gloves

I had an article about Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks but I threw it away.  (And, for what it's worth, I thought Hendricks won the fight - that my predictions were wrong and this post addresses that.)  This is one of those times when I wish my blog had more exposure than it does because this is something no one has said and I think it's really important:

Georges St-Pierre does not seem to have fully recovered from his knee surgery.  And, at any rate, since his return from break hasn't been fighting with the same efficiency as before.

Up until this point, I had been making excuses for GSP's relatively poor performance against Carlos Condit and Nick Diaz.  Condit had the advantage of GSP's ring rust and Condit's primary trainer being GSP's trainers down at Jackson-Winkeljohn. That's why GSP had such a relatively hard fight against Condit. Against Diaz, oh, he had a flu. Sure, GSP dominated both fights but . . . not in the style to which I have become accustomed. Yes, he won both fights but he seemed to lack the utter, total, multi-faceted dominance of his previous fights. There were moments when both Diaz and Condit seemed to be, well, winning. In the Diaz fight, there were points where GSP seemed, well, tired.

Against Hendricks, GSP lost, in my view. Indeed, over at MMADecisions.com, it was nearly unanimous that GSP lost. Regardless of whether GSP “really” won is a different issue – that GSP got his ass kicked.

If you look at my previous articles about GSP-Hendricks, it's easy to see that I didn't expect that. The more I thought about it, the worse it looked, stylistically, for Hendricks. It isn't like GSP hasn't fought wrestlers with good power punching before, right? And the most trouble Hendricks has been in has been with fighters with a style similar to GSP – Hendricks had split decisions against Koscheck and Mike Pierce. Hendricks lost to Rick Story. Discarding (albeit with reservations given Hendricks punching power) Hendricks' win over Jon Fitch, Hendricks doesn't do really great against other wrestlers. Furthermore, Hendricks had a very tough fight against Carlos Condit, an opponent that GSP rolled over with only one real bump along the way.

But Hendricks really kicked Georges' ass. Even if you think that GSP won enough rounds to win the decision, GSP lost the fight. Hendricks nearly finished him a couple of times, he may have landed fewer blows but they were much, much harder.

After I heard Joe Rogan point out that more than half of the blows that have landed against GSP have come in the last three fights – that in 21 UFC fights, 12 of them five rounders that went the distance, GSP has taken half of all shots in the last fifteen percent of his UFC career – it occurred to me why GSP has taken such a battering. The short answer is that GSP isn't moving as well as he used to move and he's exerting more effort to do it. While Hendricks is the highlight of this, it was evident in all three fights, really, because, well, GSP got hit a lot, something that doesn't normally happen. There was a time, before GSP's knee surgery, where he was basically untouchable. Successful power punches against him were happening at the rate of two or three a round.  But since his return from his knee surgery, he's literally being hit 5 times as much per minute in the cage.

He got this incredible defense from the very thing that made me a fan of him in the first place – he had this nigh superhuman ability to cover distance. From way across the cage, he could shoot in, land some shots and then disappear. It was like magic. Go and watch his fights with guys like Thiago Alves or his second fight with Josh Koscheck. His defense was as close to perfect as anyone in the octagon, better, I think, that Anderson Silva's at Silva's peak.

So, frankly, I expected the fight with Hendricks to resemble GSP's second fight with Kos, where Kos could do nothing to GSP except walk into GSP's jab and wing the occasional power shot. Instead, GSP was flat-footed with bad footwork. Sure, Hendricks is also able to cover a lot of distance, absolutely, but – as I said – it isn't like this was GSP's first rodeo. But where he was able to dance circles around Koscheck, connecting at will, making Kos at the top of his game look like he should be in another sport – the same Koscheck that lost a split with Hendricks, the same Koscheck whose fighting style is almost identical to Hendrick's – well, Hendricks shows better ability to cover distance and get inside GSP's defenses.

The other place where this is pretty clear is . . . GSP's power. Yeah, yeah, I know that GSP has been criticized for not finishing his fights, but, man, sure, he might not have finished them but his opponents looked like they'd been hit by a truck and in many, if not most of them, at some point GSP had his opponent's seriously rocked. This was true even in the eye-poke-athon that was GSP-Jake Shields – Shields had a plenty hard head but when GSP connected with a high kick, Shields was on his heels on rubber legs.

GSP has not rocked a single person since coming back from his leg surgery. Not one. Nick Diaz even commented on GSP's lack of power and Hendricks said that he was never in trouble, even though there was a time when GSP regularly rocked guys with very hard heads.

Against Hendricks, GSP landed several quite clean head kicks. I had predicted this. GSP is taller than Hendricks so landing the high kick would be easier than against almost any other opponent – he hasn't fought someone shorter than him since Thiago Alves. None of the head kicks seemed to faze Hendricks . . . and GSP kicks, or kicked, quite hard. Hard enough to send people stumbling back, hard enough to put them on their heels, knock them down, put them on rubber legs. They just bounced off of Hendricks. I could see their lack of impact, moreover. It wasn't like Hendricks got hit really hard and just ate it, the kicks lacked drive.  I couldn't help but think if Lyoto Machida had landed one of those kicks that the fight would have ended.

Power also comes from the legs, though. The explosiveness needed to really hurl yourself into a fight comes from the legs. If GSP's legs, or, perhaps, more properly, leg is messed up, it's going to effect his ability to throw himself into blows. It “feels” to me like GSP can still tag a person with speed but that he lacks the power to hurt them.

Since the ability to hurt one's opponent is a vital component of defense in combat sports, GSP's inability to hurt his opponents makes him more vulnerable. If you're already suffering from a reduced ability to move, well, you're in pretty serious trouble.  It might explain why you're now being hit five times as often.

Since GSP is so good, though, him at 80% is still championship caliber. Absolutely. But it's a different kind of champion. It's a champion who gets hit a lot, one who doesn't have a long shelf life.  Especially if he also lacks power.

Moreover, GSP has been talking for a while now about memory problems. While the Joe Rogan Experience podcast where GSP talks about his memory losses might just mean that GSP is weirder than we imagined and thinks, and has long thought, that he is being abducted by aliens, after the fight with Hendricks, GSP was talking about how he couldn't judge who won the fight because he couldn't remember it, that he had blurred vision, stuff like that.  That's bad juju.

For many fighters, the end comes fast. Chuck Liddell was on a seven fight winning streak before he just collapsed, losing five of his last six fights and winning against another nearly shot fighter in Wanderlei Silva (sorry, Wandy, but it is what it is). Four of Liddell's losses, including the last three, were by brutal KO. The same thing happened with Jens Pulver – overnight he went from being one of the best fighters in the world to being virtually everyone's punching bag. Tito Ortiz . . . aw, hell, I could go on and on about it, it's a well-known thing that for fighters the end can come fast and is usually ugly. Do we really want that to happen to GSP? To see an increasingly ragged GSP drag himself into the cage to be thrashed by an increasingly irrelevant group of wannabes and has-beens? I do not. Especially if it means gambling with his health.

Still, to me, it seems increasingly clear – GSP isn't the fighter he was before the knee surgery. It breaks my heart to have to say that, as GSP was my first real MMA man crush, but the evidence seems clear, to me. GSP's once incredible ability to cover distance, and the power that brought, is gone. He's fighting on one leg. Yeah, he's Georges fucking St-Pierre, so he's still a top caliber fighter – if he wants to be, if he's otherwise healthy. Regardless of whether GSP retires, I think we need to acknowledge that he's on the downhill side of his career and that can be agony to watch.  So if GSP wants to get while the getting is good we should look him in the eye, shake his hand and thank him for his ability as a fighter and ambassador of MMA.

Prediction on Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks in UFC 167

I'm going to make my prediction for Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks in UFC 167.  I think Hendricks is going to lose and do so pretty badly.  Bearing in mind that fighters lie, I believe Hendricks when he says he's going to try to wade through GSP's punches.  It . . . is his style.  To the extent that he has a plan B, it will be ground and pound.

People mention the tough fight that Carlos Condit put on against GSP as evidence that Hendricks, who beat Condit, has a chance.  Of course he has a chance.  The guy throws with power.  But Condit isn't Hendricks.  One of the incredible advantages that Condit had that Hendricks doesn't have is the fact that Condit's coach, Greg Jackson, was also one of GSP's coaches for years.  Condit trained with guys who helped train GSP.  It is also worth mentioning that Condit was GSP's first opponent after his knee surgery and even then, well, despite Condit's spirited effort, on the majority of cards, Condit lost every round - even the one where he almost knocked out GSP.  Most significantly, though, is that Condit's weakness - wrestling - is Hendricks' strength.

Hendricks doesn't have Greg Jackson in his corner to give specific, detailed advice about GSP.  GSP will have no ring rust.

I also don't like Hendricks' camp, Team Takedown.  He seems to be the camp king and I don't think someone who is so much a prima donna in his own camp really has what it takes to beat GSP.  There's no one at Hendricks camp that will really push him because he's the big star, he's the chief guy.  Tristar, where GSP trains, would be one of the best camps in the world regardless of GSP.  They just have too many top guys.  Rory MacDonald, John Makdessi, Ivan Menjivar, Francis Carmont, Mark Bocek and Mike Ricci are a probably incomplete list of Tristar fighters currently in the UFC, not counting GSP.  They've also got people in pretty much every major promotion, including Rick Hawn who has won a couple of tournaments in Bellator.  Not only can I find no evidence that any of Team Takedown's fighters are in the UFC, I can't find any evidence of them in Bellator.  Maybe they are, but . . . it is far to say that the level of training that Hendricks is getting at Team Takedown isn't really up there with what GSP gets with dudes like Rory MacDonald and Francis Carmont.

Additionally, well, let us look at his record.  None of this is to say that Hendricks has fought cans, he hasn't, but here's my brief analysis of his most recent fights:

He got a decision win over Condit, who has a weakness for wrestling (one that GSP also exploited).  He knocked out Martin Kampmann in shortly in the first . . . I said before the fight that Kampmann chokes and I think that was part of it.  Kampmann is also a slow starter.  Hendricks got a split decision against the fading Josh Koscheck.  He knocked out Jon Fitch, who was fading even faster - Fitch never really recovered from his shoulder separation.  He had a split decision against Mike Pierce, knocked out the unremarkable TJ Waldburger and lost to Rick Story.

Yeah, lost to Rick Story.

I know it was three years ago and Hendricks isn't the same fighter as he was, but let's face it - when Hendricks fights dudes who can wrestle, his record isn't quite as impressive.  The loss to Story, a split decision over Mike Pierce, a split decision over Koscheck.  Sure, he knocked out an injured Fitch, who was already on the down side of his career, but take out that flash knockout, and Hendricks' record against skilled wrestlers is one loss and two split decisions in the past three years.  His dominate fighting style fades with guys who can resist the takedown or threaten him with a takedown, and even then he struggled really hard with Carlos Condit.

Georges St-Pierre is widely regarded to be the best MMA wrestler in the sport.  No, that's not right.  He is considered to be the best MMA wrestler to have thus far been in the sport.  But wait, that's not all!  He's also a quite talented striker!  He's a much better striker than, say, Josh Koscheck or Mike Pierce or Rick Story - in the same range as Carlos Condit, actually.

Which is where the whole "wade through the jab" particularly falls apart.  Wading through GSP's jab generally ends up with a guy looking like he's been hit with a truck.  It was what Koscheck tried to do in the first and GSP literally broke his skull - his orbital bone, to be precise.  It's what Fitch tried to do, back when Fitch was regarded a top ten pound-per-pound fighter.

This is a bad stylistic match-up for Hendricks.  I suspect the fight will expose Hendricks' limitations as a fighter, too.  While he absolutely, no doubt in my mind deserves a title shot, he's got flaws in his game.  His striking is crude.  He has no jujitsu to speak of.  He's a good wrestler with a good power shot - like Koscheck before him.  His training camp doesn't provide Hendricks with the best possible training - it's mediocre with one guy who's really good and it's been a while since a guy in a mediocre camp won a UFC strap.

I think it's going to be a hard night for Johny.  I think the cage door is going to close and he's going to realize he's trapped in there with GSP.  I hope Hendricks brings it hard.  But I suspect that he'll start to wilt, sooner rather than later.  He hasn't really ever fought anyone with a good, stiff jab combined with a superlative takedown defense - much less someone as good at sweeps as GSP.  Like . . . a number of fighters before him, he'll find that nothing he does works.  Most fighters, when this happens, start to turtle up and just try to survive.  Even Nick Diaz did it!  There is something so . . . crushing about GSP's fighting style that even Nick Diaz fought primarily to survive, particularly in ground fighting.  I don't know if Hendricks has the gumption to persevere in the face of that kind of style.  I hope so but suspect not, particularly because of his camp.  Mediocre camps don't do well with great fighters, they're not equipped to handle them on a lot of different levels and one of those levels is that they have no leverage with which to push the fighter.

Here's how I think the fight will go.

I think the most likely scenario is that GSP strikes from the outside with Hendricks and then when Hendricks tries to jump in to land a bomb, GSP takes him down where he will try to pass the guard.  GSP will almost certainly pursue a reactive shot - he won't want to be caught coming in by a counter left, as Hendricks did to Fitch.  He'll wait for Hendricks to throw bombs - which he always does - and then, when Hendricks is off-balance, hit the power double.  This will make Hendricks timid with striking, I should note, if he doesn't walk into the cage timid because he fears GSP's takedown.

(The defense against this is a more technical style of striking, one that won't put Hendricks off-balance when he uses it.  He has not been developing such a style and trying it in the cage with the champ is a bad place to start pursuing technical striking.  Even if that has been a priority in his camp, in the cage, what generally happens is they keep it tight for a round or so and then, when they start to get a little tired, their technique falls apart and leaves them vulnerable.)

If GSP passes the guard, he'll try to submit Hendricks with either a kimura at any time or an armbar late in the round.  I think if Hendricks tries to shrimp out, there's a very good chance that GSP will take his back and pursue the rear naked choke.  If GSP can't pass, he won't worry about Hendrinks' submission game and will use G&P in the guard.  If Hendricks can get up, wash, rinse, repeat.  GSP will confuse Hendricks by mixing up strikes and takedowns in that way he does that can lead to the total collapse of a fighter's offense.

Second most likely scenario, GSP commits to an outside striking game.  He's got a lot of reach on Hendricks and Hendricks striking is very Hendo-esque.  But GSP has such good headwork and footwork, the odds of Hendricks catching GSP are slight, especially fighting against what I think is an eight inch reach disadvantage.  When GSP gets the better of Hendricks in the striking, Hendricks will pursue the takedown, like he did with Condit.  He'll find that GSP has a very substantial takedown defense - even if he gets it, it will be hard and rare and he won't hold it.  Indeed, he might discover GSP's sweeps - but if GSP commits to striking, expect him to simply get up.  If it does get to the ground with Hendricks on top, GSP has such great wrist control that it wouldn't be wise to expect ground and pound from Hendricks, not in a serious sense.

In either case, expect head kicks.  GSP is a little taller than Hendricks - an advantage he hasn't had over another fighter in quite some time - so he'll try to pass over Hendricks shoulder with high kicks and even spinning high kicks.

So, really, I see GSP winning this fight everywhere.  I think that Hendricks one chance for victory is a lucky punch, like he got with Kampmann.  There, I said it.  Kampmann, who chokes and starts slow, got clobbered by a lucky punch from Hendricks.  GSP does neither and has better footwork and head motion than Kampmann, regardless.

(This is in contradistinction to Chris Weidman.  I thought Weidman had a good chance against Anderson Silva because Weidman has everything Hendricks has and then everything Hendricks doesn't have.  Weidman has a top rank camp lead by Ray Longo and Matt Serra but also including John Danaher and Renzo Gracie - top guys.  Weidman is also a much better striker than Hendricks and has excellent jujitsu to accompany his wrestling.  Chris Weidman isn't just a left hook and takedown, he's a well-rounded fighter who, as Anderson Silva learned, can't get you one way will catch you in another.  He's the total package.  He's the kind of guy who beats top talent because he is top talent.  Johny Hendricks is not a one trick pony, he's a two trick pony . . .  but let's be honest, that's not a lot of tricks.  Avoiding the left and stuffing the takedown isn't really advanced combat planning for people at GSP's level of the sport.  Johny Hendricks is no Chris Weidman.)

I'm curious to see what happens after the fight, win or lose, for GSP.  The truth is it's Rory MacDonald's time.  If MacDonald gets a good win, he's the obvious candidate for title shot and the two have said they will not fight.  People keep saying that GSP needs to move up in weight but I never liked that plan.  If anything, GSP has been growing progressively smaller relative to other fighters over the course of his career.  He would be downright tiny to modern middleweights.

When GSP started, he was quite a bit bigger than average, but now he's merely average in size and shrinking as weight cutting gets more and more extreme in MMA.  It has been said that he could get down to lightweight, which is quite possible.  He is about 185 and a lot of lightweights, nowadays, cut down from that much . . . and there isn't anyone at lightweight that GSP wouldn't really fight, whereas welterweight has MacDonald and middleweight has Weidman.

My prediction is GSP by unanimous and clear decision.  It think that somewhere in the late first or early second, Hendricks will have tried everything he's got - which isn't a long list - and find himself shut down, offensively.  Then he'll go almost totally on defense and lose badly.

Johny Hendricks plans to ignores laws of physics, GSP's fist

Johny Hendricks seems to believe that he can teleport through Georges St-Pierre's hand.  He says that he is willing to eat a jab to land a right hand.  I'm sure Ellenberger said the exact same thing.  "Oh, I'll just take the jab and . . . wait, he has longer arms than me?"

Georges St-Pierre's reach is around 77 inches.  Johny Hendricks reach is around 69 inches.  Break that down, each one of Georges St-Pierre's arms is around four inches longer than Hendricks arms.

Johny, you won't be able to phase through GSP's punches.  When you come forward into the jabs, your forward momentum will be neutralized by GSP's forward momentum, and your arm will still be four inches away from Georges' shoulder.  To "walk through" the jabs, you'll then have to reset and press forward, but by then, Georges will be doing something else - perhaps another jab, starting the whole process over, again.

But this is physics, dude.  Don't think that because you can press past guys in training, who neither have Georges' length, who are hitting you with sparring punches and wearing boxing gloves, that you'll be able to do it against GSP.  The energies involved will be totally different.  He'll be hitting you with literally 300% more power than those other dudes.  This will stall your forward motion.  Because it's physics and never try to win against physics.  You never, ever will.

I think that Weidman did Hendricks no favors.  I understand the boost in confidence that Silva's fall brought - a stark reminder that these people are mortals, after all.  But my mental telepathy is telling me that Hendricks sees himself in Weidman - which is awful, because not only is Weidman a different fighter from Hendricks but GSP is an altogether different fighter than Anderson Silva.  Weidman would never fight a fighter like GSP with such a crude strategy - Roy Longo and Matt Serra would not let him.

I also think I understand why fighters like Hendricks and Ellenberger, who have fundamentally crude striking games, got this far.  For years, welterweight in the UFC has been under the shadow of GSP.  The guys at the top - Fitch, Koscheck, poor Alves who was ruined by Georges, even Condit - have been planning to fight GSP, even when they fought each other.  Strong wrestlers who used it to stay up and throw heavy leather is something that people haven't seen in welterweight in a long time.  Guys who did it in the recent past - Melvin Guillard and Robbie Lawler - never went anywhere, being consistently beaten (in the past, I mean, the ruthless one looked like a far more mature fighter, recently) by technical strikers and wrestlers, meaning they never got to the top of the division (save flukes like Dan Hardy).  The division was surprised by Ellenberger and Hendricks.

But not GSP.  GSP is the one guy in the whole division who never worries about what GSP is doing.  And from his loft at the top of the division, by the time anyone gets to him, he's not surprised by whatever they're doing.  GSP - like Rory MacDonald against Ellenberger - will not be surprised.

But I hope Hendricks is lying.  I hope that his coaches have analyzed GSP's fights and come up with a better actual plan than "defy the laws of physics to hit Georges".

Johny Hendricks wants to make GSP "exciting", ignores reality

I know that the odds are with Hendricks in a way that they haven't been with a fighter, against GSP, since BJ Penn.  And with Weidman's victory over Silva, well, I'm sure that's added a heady air of optimism for Johny Hendricks and Alexander Gustafsson.  It's proof that these dudes aren't invincible.

That said, Hendricks has a big, big uphill battle.  The battle comes on two fronts.  The first is that he's fighting Georges St-Pierre and the second is that he's fighting Georges St-Pierre.

The problem is that GSP isn't like Hendricks other opponents in terms of technique.  There is probably no fighter in the UFC who is as technical in so many areas as GSP.  The guy has all the core strengths of MMA down at an expert level. 

I hope that Hendricks is spewing BS when he says stuff like all he wants to do against GSP is punch him in the face.  Because that's the plan of a moron and if he does that, GSP will handle him like a child.  Confidence is great, but taking your opponent's skills likely is just arrogance.

The second problem with fighting GSP will be when the cage door closes and he's in there against GSP.  I think the real difference between GSP and Hendricks is that GSP will fight a very smart fight.  You listen to one of his strategy guys, John Danaher, and he talks about how it's reductive to just say, "Oh, this guy's jujitsu is better than this other guy's, or his striking is better".  He talks about how they train for key transitional states and develop strategies for them.

Johny Hendricks has several key transitional states, shall we say.  Well, two.  In particular, he uses the threat of a takedown to cover for his crude striking technique.  This was in particular evidence in the Hendricks-Condit fight.  Pretty much every time Condit started to get off on his striking, Hendricks took the fight to the mat.  He couldn't hold it there, but he took Condit down time after time, which nerfed Condit's superior striking and opened the door for Hendricks to land strikes of his own - which he would not have otherwise been able to do.  The other key transitional state is Hendricks ability to cover distance to connect with an overhand right.

However, that's pretty much the catalog of his skills.  When being outstruck, take a person to the mat, and use the hesitation caused by his ability to take people down to use his ability to cover distance to connect with the right.

This is not a bad strategy.  It is, furthermore, a strategy that has been employed successfully by one of GSP's former opponents, Josh Koscheck.  It a great style . . . but styles make fights and Hendricks doesn't have a great track record against people with good takedown defenses.  He got a split decision against Koscheck and Mike Pierce and he lost to Rick Story.  Sure, he KO'd Fitch - but that has the air of a fluke, it happened in 12 seconds.  But, in general, he's struggled with wrestlers.

He has not, of course, fought an MMA wrestler of GSP's ability, because GSP has the best MMA wrestling skillset with the possible exception of Jon Jones.  GSP has a great takedown defense.  He's not going to be worried about Hendricks ability to take him down.  So one of the key transitional areas for Hendricks to win is going to be nullified by GSP's fantastic takedown defense.  Which leaves Hendricks ability to cover distance with the overhand right . . . and we know what GSP's defense against that is going to be.  He's going to jab.

If Hendricks goes in there thinking he can just re-fight the same fight he used against Condit, Koscheck, Pierce, etc., on GSP, that ignores the differences in the skillset that GSP has.  If he tries to fight the same fight - which, to be honest, he probably will because he always fights the same fight - he will likely find his offense stifled by GSP's command of those key transitional states, that GSP will have answers for the questions that Hendricks poses.

Which is the real crunch time for people who fight GSP.  It's the same dilemma that fighters have faced since GSP's striking has gotten really good, since after his defeat to Serra.  A fighter is very likely going to find themselves in a situation where the regular tools they use to win fights don't work.  Nick Diaz was not able to employ his rolling style of BJJ to grab an arm or leg to transition into a submission or sweep while GSP's control of distance nullified Diaz's boxing.  Condit was only briefly able to use his striking effectively against GSP.  Shields couldn't use his submission game and only showed as well as he did because of five pretty flagrant eye pokes that the ref did not see.  Koscheck could not close to land his overhand right or take GSP down.  Alves so feared GSP's shot that he did not aggressively pursue his leg kicks.

All of these fighters - with the momentary exception of Condit when he got the head kick against Georges - shut down when they realized how little they could do to him.  They withdrew into their shells and did not aggressively pursue an offensive strategy.  And waiting for GSP to make a mistake is, generally, an exercise in futility.

Hendricks is going to have to face that when the cage door closes.  He'll come at GSP for a little bit but he'll get his takedowns stuffed, he'll get jabbed when he tries to close the distance and there's a real good chance he will get taken down.  Then he will realize that nothing he has done in the past will work.  He needs to change things up, right then, right there.

A few fighters can do this - Jones showed it in his fights against both Machida and Evans.  I think Weidman has it, too, the ability to change the context of the fight into one that favors your abilities - Weidman headbutted Silva's hand!  How about that as a way to show your contempt for Anderson Silva's striking.  Dominick Cruz can do it, too.  But it's rare and Hendricks hasn't shown any abilities in that area.  He has one fight.  He fights that one fight.  And it's a good fight and if GSP wasn't there, it might be enough to make him a champion for a long time.  But the same could have been said of Jon Fitch.  Fitch fought a good fight and he was very good at fighting that fight.  He was on an 8 fight winning streak before GSP beat him, and then he had a five fight winning streak before his career kinna fell apart.  But since it was the same fight, when he got into the cage with Georges, Georges just hit him like a train.  There's a really good chance that Hendricks is going to be hit by a train, too, because a guy who fights one fight is like a gift to GSP.

And when Hendricks realizes this, there's a really good chance he won't "make GSP exciting" (though I would characterize it more as, "Hendricks won't make Hendricks exciting") as he clams up and his offense flags due to his inability to deal with the multifacted nature of GSP's skillset.  He'll stall and GSP will have to carry the fight and it's really hard to finish a guy when all he wants to do is make it out of the round standing.