Awaiting the Advent of a Welterweight Striker
Photo Credit: AP
The welterweight division is zone for takedown artists. You’ve got Josh Koscheck, a former NCAA division one champion with astounding wrestling skills, who was just outwrestled and taken down often by Georges St. Pierre last weekend. We have Matt Hughes who himself is a takedown machine. Diego Sanchez and Jon Fitch’s bread and butter are wrestling. Karo Parisyan’s ability to toss someone on their head in the cage via Judo throws is second to none. While not known for supreme takedown ability, Matt Serra’s forte is also the ground game. While all these fighters possess striking skills, the most refined being St. Pierre’s, there isn’t the dominant striker who invokes terror into the hearts of his opponents trying to trade with him in the cage. In other weight classes you have fighters who are devastating on their feet if they can impose their game plan on you. You have Mirko Cro Cop at heavyweight, Chuck Liddell at 205, Anderson Silva at 185. In the welterweight class where there is such a deep pool of talent when it comes to wrestling and takedown ability, any new dominant champion to emerge onto the scene in this division will need to be a miniature version of a Chuck Liddell. It’ll be a fighter with devastating knockout striking power who can stop a takedown, and get back if when taken down. Such skills are rare and the abilities of Liddell in this area have not been duplicated in other weight classes. But with the superior wrestling of fighters at 170, the next big thing in the division will required to be equipped with devastating striking, an amazing sprawl, and equally talented scrambling skills.
[...] it gonna take for another fighter to break into the title picture at 170? The MMA Digest breaks down their vision of a fighter who’d be able to stand up to guys like Matt Hughes, Georges St Pierre and (heh) [...]
St. Pierre is a good candidate to be champion again and hold the throne at welterweight. With his skills, the fighter who is going to be able to beat him is probably going to have to be a better striker than him who can stop his shot. It’s definitely going to have to be a very genetically blessed individual.
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