Koscheck has some decent ko power...thats about his only chance. Can see him winning an early round after scoring a takedown though.
koscheck is the underdog but a live underdog. he has knockout power, good wrestling and can sub you. all that is coupled with ALOT of experience. funny thing is that despite having mixed it with 19 fighters including sanchez, hazelett, lytle, alves, thiago, trigg, johnson, daley and gsp, this is kos first title shot! if koscheck win it wouldn't leave me dumbfounded but he certainly has an uphill battle.
GSP's chin and ability to recover are questionable so a heavy handed guy with good wrestling is always going to have a chance. The problem is though I don't see him as that different a fighter from 2007. If GSP had beaten Kos standing or subbed him in 05/06 we could expect a very different match but by 07 he'd done alot of work on those faults.
The standing intrigues me because they've both worked on it alot since then. GSP nearly got Kos with a Kimura and right at the end of the fight he had locked on an ankle lock. Kos is the most recent guy to take him down. I am intrigued as to weather GSP's td defence has improved even more Kos can take him down.
I'm not sure how it was a gimme defense, is it because Kos got dominated so much? cause then you could say most of GSP's defense were gimmes. I mean, all the contenders GSP fights are guys that previously kicked ass against top WW. IMO Georges is the one that makes it look really easy. most fighters in the division (WW) would still have a LOT of trouble against Koscheck. The only one I can think of that was really a gimme was Hardy since the hole in his game was so obvious and it was going against GSP's biggest asset (wrestling). Who else would have been a better contender at the time, in your opinion?
They way I look at it is this -GSP needs to be fighting true number one contenders - which neither Hardy nor Kosheck were. If those two had fought each other or Fitch then we would have had a case for a number one contender. That's the standard I think GSP should be held to. He's too dominant a champion to be fighting anyone less than the second best guy in the division - otherwise we get these lopsided mismatches. Of course this is merely my opinion - but I'm sticking to it!
lol Judges never give credit for how much a fighter can damage his opponents fist with his face. Something has to be done about it!