The trainers for GSP and Thiago Alves sound off about UFC 100
Published by Zach Arnold on July 10th, 2009 in Current Events

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We recently wrote an article about comments that trainer Greg Jackson made about the Georges St. Pierre vs. Thiago Alves fight that is coming up at UFC 100. Jackson noted that the key to beating Alves is by crashing his ‘safety zone’ and either smashing or nullifying it. While Jackson wouldn’t say publicly what Alves’ ‘safety zone’ is, it seems very clear that he has a good idea on what weak point St. Pierre should attack. Firas Zahabi, who trains St. Pierre at the Tri-Star Gym, told Mike Straka of Fox News what he thinks the key to victory will be.

“You know, it’s no secret, Thiago if he’s going to win it’s going to be standing up so we got to make sure we close that avenue for him, we want to make sure he has no avenue of scoring anything on the stand-up. You know I tell you something, Thiago, if he’s starts scoring his kick repeatedly, it’s bad news, but Georges is so well-trained against kicks. I don’t think Koscheck was very prepared for the kicks, I don’t think Matt Hughes was prepared for the flying knees, I don’t think it’s something they see a lot in the gym necessarily, they might not have so many Muay Thai guys around him. Us, here at Tri-Star Gym and at Zahabi MMA we do a lot of stand-up, our background is Muay Thai, that’s why Georges came to me, it was one of his weaknesses, he wanted to polish up his stand-up, for us we’re very familiar with this style.”

Sherdog’s Jordan Breen says that while Jackson isn’t lying, he’s doing his best to hype up how dangerous Alves is and how to psychologically go after him.

“I think Jackson’s comments are trying to just sell the fight, and provide that bit of strategic intrigue with the selling of this “safety zone” as a major crux. That said, it’s not entirely disingenuous. When guys actually throw strikes at Thiago Alves, he backs straight up with his hands over his head, and if they keep coming forward, he grabs and swims inside to the collar tie. Neck wrestling inside and the ability to avoid taking any knees in there is going to a huge boon for St. Pierre if he can manage it. He’s going to have the reflexes and ability to check the leg kicks from Alves, so if can be safe inside, as well as at range, he’s in pretty damn good shape. Selling Alves as an opponent isn’t hard. He’s got all the athletic virtues you expect out of high-level welterweights, and he’s got brilliant takedown defense. I think if there’s a suspicion to still carry about St. Pierre, it’s about how he’ll react if he gets hit with clean killshots. Serra landed a big punch, and he completely disintegrated. He tried haphazardly to punch back, kept getting clocked, and got completely steamrolled. Alves packs more power, has far more technical craft, and a much deeper and more dynamic striking arsenal. Stylistically, this is as good as it gets in the division for challengers to St. Pierre.”

For as big of a destruction as St. Pierre orchestrated on Penn a few months ago, the name Matt Serra keeps being brought up by those who think that Alves has a chance of pulling off the upset victory. Ricardo Liborio, who trains Alves at the American Top Team facility in Florida, recently told Inside MMA that his fighter has the best chance out of anyone in the Welterweight division to beat St. Pierre.

“I always said GSP is the most well-rounded fighter that I’ve ever seen right now. He can do everything perfectly, have a very few gaps but what I don’t think he never really competed against somebody with the striking ability of Pitbull. Pitbull can really stop the takedown and he really can knock you out. It doesn’t matter who it is, just keep playing stand-up it can be a mistake and can end in a knockout, you know, Pitbull really can knock out everybody he can compete with, you know so, I stick with Pitbull, I believe that somebody in this fight is going to be knocked out or submitted, you know, it can be Pitbull too, you know, but it’s going to be a very very exciting fight, really an exciting fight.”

St. Pierre recently did an interview with Mike Straka of Fox News and sounded extremely confident that he will be able to handle the much bigger Alves.

“I’ve been training. After BJ Penn I took like one or two week off and then I was back in the gym, so, it’s been a while. I’m very well prepared and I can’t wait to fight. I’m very excited. I’m a very well rounded guy and I have a real good strategy to take him out, I think, and the best guy will win the fight. I’m very confident it will be me.”

Alves brings a lot of striking firepower to the fight. Despite this, St. Pierre doesn’t think that he will see any real surprises as far as flying knees and Muay Thai kicks.

“I saw a lot of things like that, I saw martial arts when I was seven years old so it’s been a long time so I’ve seen a lot of things and for sure he’s going to be a better version of what he was in his last fight but so am I, I’m way better fighter than I was the last fight.”

As far as handling Alves’ great takedown defense by using his wrestling skills and kick defense, the champion says he is prepared.

“It’s how you fight him standing up, how you fight him on the ground, you fight him in the clinch, how you fight him in general. I have all that planned, but it’s part of the game plan. I’ve been training a lot of stuff and I’m ready for actually it’s not his kick that’s the most dangerous thing but it’s his left hook, he’s very good with his left hook and I’m ready, his left hook, his knees and his kick are very lethal so I’m going to be very careful with that.

“The pressure is always there, I’m always nervous and I’m at my best when I’m performing under pressure.”

Zahabi, along with Jackson, have been building up a game plan to counter-attack against Thiago’s aggressiveness and technique. He has brought in several Muay Thai specialists from around the world to work with St. Pierre and prepare him for the toughest stand-up battle he’s seen to date.

“I have a lot of people, I got some guys from New York, I had some guys from France who come in, I have guys from England also all experienced fighters, a lot of them we focused on bringing in Muay Thai fighters who know some MMA who can scramble up off the ground, there’s a lot of Muay Thai experience here to make sure on UFC 100 we don’t see anything we haven’t seen before, you know, so Georges is in day in and day out with experienced Muay Thai fighters. Thiago’s an explosive guy and very strong. There are ways to fight strong, explosive guys. If we take him down, we’re going to allow gravity to do the work. We’re not going to go force to force, we’re going to allow our body weight to drain Thiago’s injury. Any good jiu-jitsu guy is not going to use force for force, that wouldn’t be a very good jiu-jitsu, so we’re going to be laying on him, forcing him to spend a lot of energy trying to get up and once he realizes he can’t give up it’s going to break his will and allow him to submit and allow us to ground and pound him and find the submission.”

Zahabi says that what makes St. Pierre such a dangerous fighter is that he prepares for all styles of fighting disciplines and manages to throw off his opponent when they least expect it. What makes St. Pierre such a disciplined fighter?

“It’s just from years of fighting, years of training him, years of building trust, you know, me and him, we trust each other very very much. Me and him and other coaches, we have such a close bond so I don’t think it will be any proble,m like it’s never been in the past and Georges sometimes we have to change a game plan you know within the fight we have to adjust it but we always have Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, it’s a world title fight so we’re very well prepared and I really think we have a good one for Thiago this time around. That’s our strength is that we do everything and some guys specialize in one thing and they are really attacking us from one front. With us, I always tell George, ‘The day a guy can predict what we’re going to do is the day we’re going to lose.’ So, I always tell him he’s got to be like that ball on the roulette table, nobody knows where it’s going to land, you know. So we can attack him standing, we can attack him in the clinch, we can take him down and pound him, we can pass his guard, we can submit him, we can hold him down, we can do so many things, so Thiago’s got to really spend a lot of time defending many fronts. We’re going to really need to focus on defending one front.”