Georges St. Pierre: UFC FUTURE DECIDED
By Sean Farrell
I have been keeping everyone up to date on the status of Georges St. Pierre’s eye injury he sustained in his last fight against challenger Jake Shields. St. Pierre suffered the injury when he took a punch from Shields early on in the bout that happened to poke St. Pierre in the eye causing him to lose vision. St. Pierre was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with hyphema (Blood inside the anterior chamber), the hyphema St. Pierre suffered has fully healed and he has resumed training.
St. Pierre’s jiu-jitsu coach and ophthalmologist Bruno Fernandes spoke about the eye injury he sustained while fighting Shields in defense of his welterweight title.
“We don’t really measure vision in terms of percentage but he lost field of vision, clarity and depth perception,” Fernandes said. “When you have hyphema, it is like looking through a really dirty window. Your vision is significantly impaired, and it is amazing he was even able to fight with such a degree of impairment.”
The champion defended his title for the sixth time and continued his run of dominance over the 170lbs. division, but the champion has been criticized for his performance, as he was unable to put Shields away when he was within range to do so.
Fernandes explained the effect of the hyphema on St-Pierre’s performance and how he thought St. Pierre performed exceptionally in defeating one of the world’s best and most dominant welterweights in Shields, with only vision in one eye.
“Trying to hit a moving target with one eye only is incredibly hard,” he said. “Trying to punch someone moving all the time is very hard. It was really challenging for him to perform under these circumstances. Everything from the left, he couldn’t see coming, and that became clear when you saw any attacks from the left were landing. That’s not common to see when he fights.”
Meanwhile, St. Pierre is getting ready for his next opponent whoever it may be, Nick Diaz seems like the most popular choice. But, while the champion recovers we are left to ponder the other possible title fights for the champion given Diaz might enter the squared circle and give the sweet science another go against former boxing champion Jeff Lacy. Diaz and Lacy looks highly possible, Diaz is training full time with Andre Ward and the rest of his team getting ready for Lacy. But is Dana White really dumb enough to not let a “super fight” happen in “his cage”? I doubt it, but you never know seeing how Diaz’s going into boxing and beating Lacy could help solidify MMA’s claim as number one combat sport.
However, I believe that boxers are boxers and MMA fighters are MMA fighters and the comparisons make no sense to begin with. Here is an analogy for my claim : Alexander Ovechkin= Most Dominant Hockey Player in NHL, Albert Pujols= Most Dominant Baseball Player in MLB, Albert Pujols can’t fire a slapshot by Ryan Miller and Alexander Ovechkin can’t hit Cliff Lee’s fastball out of the park, so what’s the difference in how a boxer performs in MMA and how MMA fighters perform in boxing? Regardless of them being elite athletes they play two entirely different sports and are average at best if crossing over.
St. Pierre will be game however for whoever he may be facing and based on his last performance, he may be willing to try and get a finish this time.