In another clinical performance sure to feed the flames of his critics, Georges St. Pierre remained welterweight champion.
St. Pierre kept the fight standing and went 25 minutes with Jake Shields, retaining his title with another unanimous decision in the UFC 129 main event on Saturday before 55,000 fans -- a record crowd for a mixed martial arts event in North America -- at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Scores were 50-45, 48-47 and 48-47 for the French-Canadian, who extended his career-best winning streak to nine.
Still, St. Pierre did not escape unscathed. Shields landed stiff jabs and right crosses, at times almost at will. One of them left St. Pierre with damage to his left eye.
“I think it was the second round,” he said. “In the beginning, I was able to see. I can’t see out of my left eye right now. I just see a blur, and it’s very bad.”
St. Pierre went the distance for the fifth time in his last six fights. The jab was again his weapon of choice, backed up by spinning back kicks to the body and overhand rights. He wobbled the durable Shields more than once, delivering a head kick in the fourth round that had the Cesar Gracie disciple in search of an emergency takedown.
Shields, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, never got the fight to the ground. His strikers were better than advertised but lacked the necessary potency to put the champion in real danger. The defeat was the first for Shields in more than six years and halted a string of 15 straight wins.
“His striking was much better than I thought,” St. Pierre said. “He closed my eyes. Standing up, I was expecting to beat him more with ease and then put him down later in the round, but I couldn’t deliver much like this. I’m sorry to the fans. I wanted to make a knockout or submission tonight.”
Afterward, the pound-for-pound ace dodged questions surrounding his immediate future, including a potential super fight with middleweight king Anderson Silva.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I just finished my fight. I haven’t considered that yet. Going up in weight class is a lot to consider. Maybe there are other ways of [making that fight]. We’ll talk.”
Article according to Sherdog.com
