Hendricks vs. Lawler

This is the official discussion thread for Hendricks vs. Lawler. Let's see what you've got.

Johny will not take the fight down.  He will stand and bang with Robbie.  Johny wants to send a message and make his statement.  He wants to beat Robbie in Robbie's strong area.  Mark my words.  

This fight should be 50-50.  These odds are too skewed.  78-22 doesn't make a lot of sense.

It won't make much difference who wins.  GSP will return in November and set things right.  Will reclaim his belt.

All you people who refer to the belt as rightfully Johny's are quite mistaken.  Not until the judges say it is his can anyone make any such claims.  

If GSP returns after a year off he'll lose to Johny again ... badly this time, when the "champion's judging grace" and the champ's confidence level is in Johny's corner he won't get the short end of the stick again. 

Did you not see the fight? No ring-rust GSP had very hard time taking Johny down and couldn't keep him down to save his life ... if GSP can't take you down, he can't beat you because he damn well ain't going to finish you.

Ha ha ha.  You make me laugh, yoss.  I don't mind if you think Hendricks won the first won and will win again.  Just makes it sweeter when he loses worst than the first time.

GSP had such a hard time because he made some errors in strategy.  When he couldn't take Johny down at will, he couldn't change his tactics quickly enough under pressure in the cage in the moment.

Next time he will use more sensible, better tactics.  Hit and run, bob and weave, stick and jab guerrilla warfare.  Use his speed and agility to circle, flurry and get out.  Stay out of reach and use his legkicks to back Hendricks off. 

The same tactics Frankie Edgar used to beat BJ Penn twice.  Same tactics that worked for countless other fighters in both boxing and MMA.

Dempsey vs. Tunney (twice)
Ali vs. Sonny Liston
Ali vs. George Forman
Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Marvelous Marvin Hagler

I will remember your comments and will remind you how wrong you were when GSP beats Hendricks handily by using better tactics and a sensible gameplan.  Ha ha ha ha.  

* Edited at 02.08.2014, 4:20 PM ET *

To be honest @Bill, I don't think there will be any reminding because I don't think GSP's coming back ... but if he does, I don't really think he can win a fight strictly by bobbing and weaving and his footwork isn't remotely close to any of the names you dropped ... his game so far has been based on the fact that he can take anyone put in front of him down and control him ... he can't do that to Johny.

Sure he can jab, he can kick, he can try to keep distance, but he tried all that in the first fight without a year (or more) outside the cage and a more timid (since he was fighting a legend) and less confident than he'd be as a champ and after he's already "felt" GSP Hendricks had the answers. You're talking as if in the first fight GSP stood in the pocket and went balls to the wall with Hendricks. He tried to do all of his range-controlling tricks and in the most part they didn't work.

GSP isn't going to suddenly develop Frankie/Ali/Dempsey/Sugar Ray footwork at the age of 32. He's still an amazing fighter, I just think that Hendricks is that one guy who can negate him. His Kryptonite if you may.

Yeah, who knows if Georges will ever be back. He seems to be having a painfully hard time coming out of the closet. Poor Georges.

Gee, yoss.  You're really having me scratching me head here.  Did we see the same fight?  I just re-watched it twice in the last week.  Just to see if I was over-reacting.  

What I saw was GSP being surprised by Johny being so hard to take down and not being able to hurt him.  That threw him off his game.  But, unlike you, I saw GSP refuse to back off, even when he got hit hard.

I saw GSP stay in the pocket, stay in Hendricks' face, and continue to engage up close and personal.  By the middle of the second round, I saw Hendricks start to slow, and GSP gave him blow for blow.  GSP kept up the counter strikes, the jab, and Hendricks kept shaking his head, as if he wasn't being hurt by all the punches.  Hendricks was visibly slower in the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds from what he was in the first.  GSP was about the same.

And by the way, GSP's face is like a banana.  It bruises just by looking at it.  His face looked worse than Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit.  His face normally looks very bruised.

I saw GSP keep the pressure on Hendricks.  He never backed off.  Yeah, Hendricks' punches hurt GSP more than GSP's punches hurt Johny, but so what?  That doesn't affect the scoring, which pisses off Johny's supporters, and GSP's critics.  

I think it's this scoring rules that give GSP the win.  There's an old saying in fighting.  To beat the champion, you must do so decisively, clearly and cleanly.  Not a razor-close decision.  

Maybe the rules should be changed to allow the damage done by strikes to count more heavily, instead of just the number of strikes landed, or landed solidly.

That is a  very different way to fight than the one I described above, which is what I think GSP will bring to the rematch.  I think all his coaches, Firas Zahabi, Conrad Pla, Bruno Fernandes, Greg Jackson, Mike Winkejohn will advocate the game-plan I am suggesting.

* Edited at 02.08.2014, 5:41 PM ET *

@Bill Burgess By God Bill, I don't think you've realized what went wrong for Georges St-Pierre against Johny Hendricks. That bob-and-weave, leg kick ******** is way too much.

The reason why GSP got handled in the striking department? GSP's only got a jab. Hendricks easily neutralized the jab because he's a real southpaw who actually throws jabs as well and that completely ****** GSP over. What GSP needs to do is develop any semblance of a right straight so that he could actually have a chance of hitting Hendricks.

* Edited at 02.08.2014, 5:44 PM ET *

@AnikM  By God, AnikM.  I don't think you realize the Big Picture with respect to GSP vs. Hendrikcs.  That bob-weave, leg kick ******** is exactly the right game-plan.  More so than stand and bang in the pocket.

There is nothing wrong with developing more boxing tools, but the game-plan I suggest is the EXACT right one to use against Hendricks.  And mark my words, his trainers will have him using it.  

I'm so confident on this, I'm willing to offer a AV or sig bet.  Want to make it interesting?

@Ct  Well, on this particular case, I just happen to agree with you.  I really do.  But the judges are bound and obligated to go by the rules currently on the books, and not substitute their own personal values.

The rules do indeed need to be adjusted to reflect in the cage realities.

But it's just like in criminal cases in court.  The jurors might all realize that the person being tried is guilty as sin, but the investigating detectives failed to bring the jurors the objective evidence to put the person away.

OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, Casey Anthony were all guilty as sin but they didn't have the evidence to find them guilty.  Except that in the OJ case, they did indeed have a massive amount of evidence but the jurors just didn't want to find the bastard guilty.  They didn't do their jobs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence

@Bill Burgess Let me break it down for you; the bob-and-weave technique is an extremely difficult technique to master and frankly, at this stage in his career GSP would have a great amount of trouble learning to the point where he would be able to use it against a Johny Hendricks, who when in control, has an excellent boxing game.

As for the leg kick game, Hendricks' southpaw stance poses a great problem for GSP. The open guard striking stances (orthodox versus southpaw) effectively nullifies that idea because any lead leg kicks by GSP would be ridiculously easy to catch (the jab hand can reach for the leg a lot quicker than the power hand) and Hendricks' top notch wrestling game would take full advantage of that.

To put it in simpleton terms, Hendricks' amazing wrestling and southpaw stance make it almost impossible for GSP to employ a stick-and-move type game with leg kicks. You feel like that is the solution because it just sounds like a typical solution to any MMA striking problem, but people (you included) need to realize that the science of fighting goes significantly deeper than that.

All GSP needs is a right hand to beat Hendricks because GSP only has a jab and when Hendricks completely nullified that, GSP was forced to completely abandon the boxing game and that led to a predictable kicking game.

Just a side note, the most impressive part about that is that GSP had to employ an extremely predictable striking and even then he was able to score enough points to win (in my opinion as well as others).

This is one of the hardest calls I've ever had to make. Given their styles and how they match up I think it will be a KO but who gets it is up in the air. I think Robbie's striking is cleaner and they both deliver dynamite, but I think Hendricks can take the bigger shot so I had to give him the slight edge.

I'm going for Hendricks! Lawyer will be his toughest opponent I believe!

@AnikM  OK.  That sounds reasonable.  

By changing the notoriously stubborn opinion of Bill Burgess, I feel like I have accomplished something only few have ever come close to doing.