I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a huge nut hugger vocal fan of Matt Serra. The crew and I have decided that Serra-Longo are our NY Yankees of MMA. One friend even started a letter writing campaign to get Luke Cummo on the televised portion of UFC 82 (or, he at least posted a MySpace bulletin on it), and we joke that everyone on Long Island can play “Six Degrees of Matt Serra.” Everyone was anxious to see Serra vs. Matt Hughes last December, wanting to see Hughes get beat up for all the reasons everyone likes to see Hughes get beat up.
F*cking back injuries.
Instead we got Georges St. Pierre putting the hurt on Hughes, and now it’s GSP vs. Serra next month to unify the welterweight titles. Much like last fight, most people aren’t giving Serra much of a chance. How do you train for a fight like that? Well, so sayeth “The Terror” in a recent interview:
“(St. Pierre) is a very talented guy, you know. I’ve just seen both with Koscheck and Hughes, it’s almost that – it’s not that I care about being disrespectful to Hughes – but it’s almost like I see two guys that want to get hit less than GSP. The last guy, besides myself, that gave GSP all he could handle was B.J. (Penn) because B.J. don’t give a f***. And I think that’s the attitude you have to have…You have to kind of put yourself in the danger zone with this guy, and I feel you have to have the mentality – like ‘him or me.’ That type of mentality.”
As far as his chances go…I suppose you can go with a Rocky IV (short Italian, foreign country) or New York Giants analogy. For me, I’m sticking with the fact that while GSP has tore through his last two opponents, Serra has yet to be “finished” in any of his fights, and will more than likely be heading into this one knowing he’s the one who has the most to prove.
I’m not counting him out just yet.
EDIT: When I said Serra hasn’t been finished, I completely forgot about the Shonie Carter backfist…that they showed us 1,000 times or so. Oopsie.
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