Pound-for-Pound Mortals

First Chael Sonnen bludgeoned UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva for four and a half rounds.

Now pound-for-pound greats Jose Aldo and George St. Pierre both have been shown to be less than gods.  And, if there is one thing that the two five-round title fights at UFC 129 demonstrated, it is that every fighter has his vulnerabilities.

In fact, in the featherweight championship, challenger Mark Hominick nearly finished Aldo in the final round with a ferocious ground-and-pound.  Aldo looked almost too exhausted to lift his arms to defend himself.  All three judges, it seems, scored that final round 10 to 8 in favor of Hominick.  (Note: Bruce Buffer announced one of the judges scores as 50 to 43 in favor of Aldo.  Reportedly, this was a clerical error.  That judge actually score it 48 to 45.)  Yes, Aldo was clearly the winner.  And, yes, Aldo repeatedly knocked Hominick down with an assortment of vicious strikes.  But the champion looked gassed as early as the second round and, at least this night, conditioning was his kryptonite.

GSP, too, looked far less than stellar in his title defense.  In an entirely stand-up fight, he lost a round (some would say two rounds) to a very mediocre striker in Jake Shields.  Other than a head kick that briefly jolted Shields, the champion's striking was so-so at best.  He offered mostly ineffective jabs, wild overhand rights, and a few harmless spinning back kicks.  Moreover, GSP was so intimidated by Shields' grappling that he only took the challenger to the ground twice, somewhat reluctantly, inflicting no damage.  After 25 minutes, it was GSP who was bloodied and half-blind.  This should have highly-ranked welterweights like Jon Fitch, Thiago Alves, and Carlos Condit licking their lips.

Anderson, Aldo and St. Pierre can be beaten.  That much is clear.  So now, it seems that just one man stands, unchallenged, atop the pound-for-pound pedestal: Jon "Bones" Jones.  As Dana White said, Jones looks like "he's a mile ahead of everybody else."  But the 205-pound division is not full of slouches and one of them, Lyoto Machida, sent a frightening message to Jones on Saturday night by knocking Randy Couture (and his front tooth) into retirement with a brutal flying front kick.