Last Saturday at UFC 110 George Sotiropoulos proved the majority of fans and pundits wrong by dominating the heavily favored Joe Stevenson everywhere the fight went. Weather on the feet, in top position or from his back, Sotiropolous was never in trouble and always had Stevenson defending either his crisp striking or a slew of diverse submission attempts. While Stevenson had a few moments of brilliance diving for a D'arce choke and getting top position late in the 3rd round, the 30-27 score that George received hardly tells the whole story.
Already fans are breaking down Sotiropolous vs Penn, maybe less because of his win over Joe "Daddy" and more because there doesn't seem to be any challenges for Penn inside the UFC lately. One lightweight that fans have always wanted to see Penn pitted against, Shinya Aoki, has fought Sotiropolous in the past. The fight can be watched here on MiddleEasy dot com.
http://middleeasy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1626:aoki-vs-sotiropoulos-is-so-perfect-of-a-fight-that-it-already-happened-and-we-have-the-video&catid=35:events
While George spent much of the first round protecting his knees from Aoki's heel hook attempts and ended the fight with an unfortunate groin kick, George fought well against one of the worlds top lightweights. It's likely George has been overlooked due to going through The Ultimate Fighter show and losing on that show to Tommy Spear, a fighter who has since been dropped from the UFC. During that TUF loss however George was poked in the eye several times and was fighting a man huge for the welterweight division, let alone Georges home division of lightweight.
After a perfomance like the one against Stevenson, Sotiropolous' next fight should be against a top 5 opponent. Perhaps Sean Sherk, Gray Maynard or Tyson Griffin or even the winner of Gomi vs Florian would appropriate next level opponents and a quality win over either would put George within sight of BJ Penns belt.
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