By Sean Farrell

UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre successfully defended his title late last month against Jake Shields, but retaining his belt didn’t come as easily as it looked.

Shields, known primarily for his grappling, hung around when he found he was unable to get St-Pierre to the ground and tried to establish some offense of his own while standing. Displaying improved but well below average striking, Shields managed to do some damage to the dominant St. Pierre, forcing him to dig deeper than usual to pull out the win.

As I reported after the bout, St. Pierre was rushed to the hospital because he lost vision in his left eye and here is the reason for that. Fairly early in the fight, one of Shields’ punches ended up poking St-Pierre in the eye, causing blood to gather in his left eye’s anterior chamber, a condition known as Hyphema. The pooling of blood at the front of the eye often results in impaired or completely blocked vision, but is usually not a serious or lasting injury. St. Pierre posted his diagnosis and prognosis to his Twitter page, telling his fans to rest assured that he will return to action at one hundred percent. “My medical condition is called Hyphema,” posted St-Pierre. “My vision is still blurry and my eye sensitive but the blood in my eye has now been absorbed…” With treatment of the injury being generally non-invasive — usually consisting of rest and protection of the eye to avoid further irritation/bleeding — St-Pierre expects to make a full recovery. He wrote, “My retina is [fine] as well and my vision will come back to 100%!!! Can’t be more happy!!”

Could this be a set back in him taking a fight with Nick Diaz? Only time will tell but it looks as if GSP will be back to make his seventh title defense this year.

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