UFC 171: Best welterweight title fight in years – without the best welterweight

Maybe we can live without Georges St-Pierre after all. For a little while, anyway, if we have to, and if we get fights like the one that Johny Hendricks and Robbie Lawler put on at UFC 171 in the meantime.

Their main event clash for the UFC 170-pound title vacated by St-Pierre was one of the best welterweight title fights in years, and it happened without the benefit of the best welterweight in MMA history.

That’s no coincidence. As great as GSP was/is, it’s hard to imagine him doing what Hendricks (16-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) and Lawler (22-10 MMA, 7-4 UFC) did in Dallas on Saturday night. GSP always liked to treat the cage like one big chessboard. Hendricks and Lawler could’ve had their pay-per-view fight in a phone booth and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. This was a fight contested almost entirely within arm’s reach. It was probably the only five-round bout in UFC history in which the participants were in such danger of constantly stepping on one another’s toes.

It was also a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Remember that game you’d play as kids where you and a buddy take turns punching each other in the shoulder until somebody quits? It was like that, only instead of shoulders it was faces, and instead of kids it was grown men who are both known for their obscene punching power. By now they’re both used to fights in which the strategy is built around biting down on the mouthpiece and trying to punch through the other guy’s frontal lobe. What they’re not used to is having someone across from them who’s still conscious and upright after they do it.

If there’s an upside to losing one of the sport’s biggest stars, whether it’s a temporary hiatus or something more long-term, it’s this: For the first time in six years, we have a new UFC welterweight champion. He might not be quite as polished or pretty as GSP, but he is pretty great to watch, in large part because he’s willing to take the risks and do the things that St-Pierre never would.

For instance, take Hendricks’ strategy for much of this fight. Here he is, taking on one of the great power punchers in all of MMA, and Hendricks decides he’s going to beat him from two feet away, banging away with left hands and pawing rights of his own. Instead of trying to frustrate or nullify or outmaneuver Lawler, he opted to just be tougher and better than him. It was a strategy not without its risks.

We got a glimpse of that in the third, when Lawler’s famed punching power finally put some rubber in Hendricks’ legs. Suddenly it started to look like a familiar scene. Lawler gets outpointed and outworked early, and he then lands one big shot that changes everything. The way this story usually ends is about 90 seconds later, with a doctor shining a light in the other guy’s eyes.

But Hendricks not only survived, he came back. He continued to put himself in the same danger zone where he got clipped. He came straight at Lawler in that final round, fighting with all the urgency that he lacked in the fifth round of his fight with St-Pierre. Maybe that’s why, this time, the judges sent him home with the hardware.

Now begins a new challenge for Hendricks, who needed 10 brutal rounds across two consecutive title fights in order to claim the belt. Now that he has it, he has to find a way to live with it. Filling GSP’s Gucci loafers won’t be easy, but neither will defending the title in a division that now finds itself thick with talent of all stripes.

It’s one thing to be willing to go bomb-for-bomb with fellow welterweight sluggers when you’re just another hungry challenger. It’s another thing to do it once you’re already the champ, when you suddenly have so much to lose.

For complete coverage of UFC 171, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

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