NEW..st pierre article,,

kiefersimpson · 06-12-2007, 05:54 AM

Georges St. Pierre: Fists are fine but what about his head?

Neil Davidson, Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 Article tools
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Font: * * * * (CP) - Georges St. Pierre's shock loss to Matt Serra is continuing to cause waves for the former UFC welterweight champion.

The 170-pound mixed martial arts fighter from Montreal has been forced to leave his jiu-jitsu mentor, has switched kickboxing coaches and finds himself embroiled in a debate over whether he has the mental game to go with his undeniable physical assets.

Adding to the mix, St. Pierre's manager agrees with UFC president Dana White that the Canadian lost to Serra because of cracks in his mental game. But Stephane Patry says the Serra setback was a one-off.

"Dana is one thousand per cent right on the fact that he lost that fight mentally," Patry told The Canadian Press in an interview from Montreal. "But saying that Georges is not good mentally is wrong. To beat Matt Hughes the way he beat him. To beat Frank Trigg, Sean Sherk, the way he beat those guys, you need to be mentally strong, especially when you're 23 years old doing so."

Serra, a 10-1 underdog, upset St. Pierre in the Canadian's first title defence at UFC 69 in April in Houston. St. Pierre was humble after the fight, saying Serra deserved the win. But he angered Serra in a subsequent interview when he blamed the loss on the fact that a knee injury restricted his training to just two weeks.

St. Pierre, 26, also said he would never have taken the fight if his opponent had been former champion Matt Hughes.

"But I told myself it's Matt Serra, I can beat this guy easily, he said. "I took it, I made a mistake, I learned a big life lesson from it."

Serra was not impressed. "How do I not get insulted by that," he told MMA Radio.

"Drink your red wine, go to your hockey game and shut up," added Serra, referring to St. Pierre as Frenchy.

As a consequence, Serra told New York-based jiu-jitsu mentor Renzo Gracie he would leave if St. Pierre continue to train there. Serra has been a student of Gracie longer than St. Pierre, so the Canadian became the odd man out.

St. Pierre, who opted not to train at Gracie's academy in the buildup to the Serra fight, is now working on his jiu-jitsu in Montreal with Bruno Fernandez and Fabio Holanda.

He has also switched kickboxing coaches, leaving Victor Vargotsky to work with Phil Nurse in New York. Hopefully that split was amicable. Vargotsky is a former kickboxing champion from Ukraine and an ex-Soviet Union special forces sniper who served in Afghanistan,

Patry believes lack of training was not his fighter's problem,

"I don't think he lost that fight because (of) how long his training was, I think he lost that fight mentally," he said in an interview.

But the two are connected, according to Patry. "The whole mental thing happened because of the three weeks of training."

The knee injury - which forced the UFC to postpone the bout from Feb. 3 to April 7 - cut into training, as did a bout of flu, according to Patry.

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Finnish Fan · 06-12-2007, 06:09 AM

It's a week old, so I wouldn't exactly call it new.

You also failed to post a link and/or the rest of the interview. Not that it really matters since it's been done already in other threads. But for future reference perhaps.