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Greg Jackson talks about GSP’s strategy against BJ Penn
By Zach Arnold | July 7, 2009
In addressing a question about whether or not he game plans a fight to break an opponent’s will:
“It’s kind of a complicated issue,” Jackson recently pontificated. “We have a structure that we give him, these are the things that you want to do, these are things you don’t want to do, here’s what you do when he does this, here’s what you do when he does that, within that structure the artist has to be able to work, so you have… you’re tethered by it, but within that structure you’re able to move around. The BJ Penn fight is a great example of that. Once I saw that with BJ Penn we were able to out kickbox him, I wanted to take that way from BJ Penn so even though our game plan was to take him down, in the second round I called, I believe it was the second round I called “I want to kickbox him more” because mentally I wanted BJ Penn to know that he couldn’t win at that point kickboxing, so if he was going to try to get up from the guard it was going to be no better for him, and that starts the breaking process. So that was something that we did on the fly a little bit, you can do it Georges, once you see where the fight is going, so there’s a little bit of that adaptation stuff, but mostly you pretty well stick to the game plan.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
If memory served me correctly the first round was pretty even. Although GSP pushed the pace, BJ had stopped all his takedown attempts.
So in the second GSP did kickbox him for a while, but the BJ landed a big punch and GSP decided he didn’t want to kickbox anymore. So he went back to the ground plan. Thats where he hurt BJ.
So although GSP did end up out kickboxing him, it was only after the damage was done on the ground.
Either way, GSP laid a severe ass-whoppin’ on BJ. At no point was Penn even close to doing any substantial damage in that fight.
If GSP wins on Saturday, what’s next? I don’t think a “Dream Fight” with Anderson Silva makes sense anymore, because a) Silva is fighting way up at 205, and b) Seeing Silva fight these days is more of a nightmare than a dream.
I just can’t imagine who would have a legitimate shot at the WW title if GSP is still champion after UFC 100.
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