Quote:
Originally Posted by macewen
(Post 706788)
I dont see Vitor beating gsp. He has trouble with wrestlers, ppl say he learned alot from fighting Randy, yet didnt learn enough to stop tito? Yeah GSP by UD in a 3 round fight. Stoppage in 5. |
Well, MMA math aside, there are a lot of factors you might consider.
First, they might have been referring to his training at Couture, not just the fights, or I might be reading into things.
Second, I thought Vitor won the Tito fight, but the performance by both fighters were close, and Vitor did more damage and came far closer to ending it than Tito did.
Third, Tito is an excellent wrestler, he might not have Georges' takedowns, but he's every bit as good a wrestler as GSP, if not better. Then, factor in that Tito is absolutely enormous compared to Vitor, and was still fighting close to peak form at that point. Comparing the pale shadow of Tito today to his performances at that point is just night and day. Now all that's left is a giant head and an empty soundbyte, but that would be a horrible misjudgement of his ability back in the day.
This fight also occurred at the worst period of Vitor's life: during the first year or so when his sister had been missing without a trace. Following his career, there is an obvious drop around here in Vitor's performance, but he still did enough in the first two rounds to win Tito fight, in my opinon.
Today; Vitor is every bit as explosive as Georges, with much better handspeed, better striking and the legitimate KO power that GSP lacks. He's also not a slouch on the ground. I don't doubt that GSP could take him down, but I just don't see Georges stopping him with the first successful takedown, or even controlling him for the entire fight. I think their groundgame is very competative. It would be interesting to see Georges on his back again, and Vitor has the potential to put him there.
I think Georges holds an obvious advantage in conditioning, and I believe he's still got some reach on Vitor [which would tell you the something about the physical advantages he employes at WW] but I think the match is very, very competative. Obviously Georges comes in with great plans from a great camp, but I think it's too early to tell how much Vitor has improved at XC. I do think that Georges is focusing some much-needed effort on his ground game [if he's going to be successful at MW, it's needed] and that just makes the fight more interesting.
In the end, I think Vitor has more ways to end the fight, but I think it's a fantastic matchup.
rh