Georges St. Pierre retained his welterweight title with a unanimous decision victory over Carlos Condit in the main event of UFC 154 last night (Sat., Nov. 17, 2012) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Save for missing a beautifully executed head kick that nearly finished him off in the third round, it was a brilliant performance from the returning champion, who looked like the "GSP" of old.
Fight Metric (who you should definitely read) has released its report on the bout and the statistics tell an interesting tale.
Condit's sheer volume is impressive, but he's dwarfed in significant strikes. This makes sense when considering "The Natural Born Killer's" strategy seemed to mirror the one he used to defeat Nick Diaz back at UFC 143.
Get on that bike and ride while dipping in and out with strikes.
The problem with doing that against St. Pierre is his wrestling is otherworldly, at least compared to his mixed martial arts contemporaries. Sure enough, the stats show that to be true in this case too:
That's 7 of 8 on takedown attempts and a full 8 passes to half guard. To Condit's credit he neutralized 6 pass attempts but he himself admitted "Rush" was simply better once they went to the mat.
Finally, the performance rating, which is as you would expect it to be.
He's the best in the world.
For more on St. Pierre vs. Condit click here and for complete UFC 154 results and coverage click here.