Yahoo! Sports columnist Kevin Iole provided us with some quotes from Matt Hughes this week regarding his fight with Georges St. Pierre and his upcoming battle with Thiago Alves that I found to be vintage Matt Hughes:
On Alves: “To be honest, I like the matchup,” Hughes said. “He’s a stand-up guy. On the ground, he’s not nearly as dangerous. I’ll be stronger, I believe I’ll be the better wrestler and I like the fact he’s kind of a slow starter. I think I can wear him out before he gets going.”
On St. Pierre: “I got into a couple of positions I wanted to be in and I didn’t pull the trigger,” Hughes said. “Walking away from the octagon that night, I said to myself, ‘That wasn’t me. Obviously, Georges is a tremendous fighter, but I had a real bad night at the same time he had a real good night. When that happens, you saw what the result can be. But I did get into some good positions and I saw some things, but I couldn’t do what I knew I needed to do.”
I want to ask this question… did Matt Hughes simply have a bad night in the Octagon or is St. Pierre just that dominating in the UFC’s Welterweight division? In my opinion, it wasn’t just a terrible night for Matt Hughes in the Octagon, but a different Georges St. Pierre.
Some people have claimed that St. Pierre has become gun shy in the standup game while others claim that his superior ground skills are the easiest way for him to win each fight. Regardless, it doesn’t really matter what you perceive to be the reason he has become a crushing force on the ground. He still wins fights in unbelievably impressive fashion against top competition. Matt Hughes found that out, and I’m hesitant to believe that a “bad night” was the culprit of such an embarrassing performance by Hughes.
For Hughes, that’s exactly what he has probably called it a thousand times… embarrassing. But was it really that embarrassing? He was clearly outclassed, outpowered, and outmatched in every aspect of that fight. Do we simply chalk it up to a poor gameplan and bad night for Hughes? I don’t believe so, and I think if it were to happen a second time, it’d be much of the same power and punishment by St. Pierre.
What about Thiago Alves? Does Hughes possess the wrestling skills to make it a hard night for Alves? He does in fact possess that skill, but his quote above rubs me the wrong way in a similar way to what Parisyan stated leading up to his fight with Alves. A lot of fans underestimate Alves’s potential, and luckily for me, I’ve always found his combinations to be truly devastating to any type of fighter in that cage. There is a reason he’s known as “The Pitbull”.
Hughes is correct in that Alves won’t be as dangerous on the ground, but his leg kicks are absolutely devastating in every fight he takes. He can literally make your lead leg mush within the first round of a fight, and his power is being underestimated by Hughes. Slow starter or not, Alves still has great Muay Thai striking that could create a huge problem for Hughes. Let’s hope Hughes doesn’t have another “bad night”.