St. Pierre stops LI's Serra for UFC title

BY JOE FERNANDEZ | joe.fernandez@newsday.com

3:25 AM EDT, April 20, 2008

MONTREAL - If you were a Canadian fighter Saturday night at the Bell Center in Montreal, you could do no wrong.

And that's exactly what Montreal native Georges St. Pierre did against Long Islander and UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra.

St. Pierre, like many of the Canadian fighters on the UFC 83 card, was blanketed by the deafening cheers of his home crowd of 21,390 fans and fought a perfect fight. He stayed mostly on top of Serra for two rounds and earned the welterweight championship with a referee stoppage win at 4:43 of the second round.

"It's never a good feeling," Serra said. "This game has such extreme highs and lows. I haven't had a fight stopped since Shonie Carter in 2001. So obviously I'm not happy."

Serra (16-5), who teaches Brazilian jiu-jitsu in East Meadow and Huntington, was in hostile territory from the beginning. Besides having family, friends and nearly 20 of his students at the event, the cheers for St. Pierre overwhelmed everything, even the post-fight Octagon interviews.

"No, not at all," said Serra when he was asked if the pro-St. Pierre crowd got to him. "I'm actually pretty cool with that. My head is pretty good with that stuff."

St. Pierre (16-2) started quickly. Learning from his first fight with Serra last April, in which the heavily-favored Canadian fighter was knocked out, the 26-year-old shot in on the champ's legs and took him down early. Serra, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, was able to pull guard and survive the first round.

At the start of the second round, Serra had a large bruise on his right eye. Once again, St. Pierre was able to take down the 33-year-old champion. From there, he was relentless. Serra did his best to spin out of bad positions, but the crowd favorite landed devastating knees to the ribs of a turtled-up Serra near the end of the second round as referee Yves Lavigne stepped in and stopped the fight.

"I couldn't hear my cornerman," said St. Pierre about the crowd noise. "At the end, I used the energy of the crowd to finish with a flurry."

Serra was originally supposed to have a match with former welterweight champ Matt Hughes last December, but during a training session in November, Serra herniated two discs in his back and the fight was postponed. St. Pierre stepped in and fought Hughes instead that December for the interim welterweight title.

But the long way that Serra has come isn't only measured in the distance from East Meadow to Montreal. With a 4-4 UFC record in 2005, Serra wasn't considered a top welterweight contender. But then in 2006, he won "The Comeback" season of SpikeTV's "The Ultimate Fighter," which earned him the title shot against St Pierre.

"Hughes is the next logical opponent," said Serra, who coached against Hughes during a season of "The Ultimate Fighter" and openly dislikes him. "I want to take the wife on vacation, chill out, go over some new techniques, train ... I'll probably fight again in the fall."

Watch post-fight video and read our MMA blog, Fightin' Words, for the undercard results at Newsday.com/mma.