UFC 100 will be the long awaited title shot for Thiago Alves, who more than earned it after his 3 round beating of Josh Koscheck along with his TKO's of the legendary Matt Hughes and the once periennal contender Karo Pariysan.  He comes in as arguablly the best striker Georges has ever faced in his career which is a who's who of the welterweight division.  It won't be easy, but I am confident that St. Pierre will come out on top.

If and when this happens, where does this leave the 170 lb. division in the UFC?  No one really stands out as a challenger to the belt in my opinion.  #3 USAT/SBN Jon Fitch doesn't seem like an appealing rematch right now, and neither does #5 Matt Hughes.  #4 Jake Shields doesn't seem like leaving Strikeforce anytime soon.  Then there are lots of guys who will be contenders at some point if get some wins together like #23 Anthony Johnson, #17 Dustin Hazelett, #15 Brock Larson, #9 Carlos Conduit, and #12 Dan Hardy.  All of which have lots of promise, but just haven't taken that next step yet.

This leaves #6 Martin Kampmann and #7 Mike Swick.  Both of these guys have been on a roll, but I think they should get one more win before getting a title shot.  Which brings me back to GSP.  As long as GSP wins in non-controversial fashion, I think a good idea would be giving him a "testing the waters" fight at 185 to see how he would fare.  If they were to do this they would have two choices that jump out at me immediatly.  If they want to play it safe, they could go with #10 Chael Sonnen.  A middle of the pack 185 fighter that doesn't really pose too much of a threat to GSP outside of the wrestling department, and I think GSP would have a very good chance of being able to win that fight.  In the mean time, Swick and Kampmann can fight each other for the next title shot at 170.

Now if they wanted to get riskier, I think another intresting prospect would be to put him in there against #3 Yushin Okami.  Okami has been hovering right at a title shot but has just gotten some bad luck lately.  Coupled with the fact that there is absolutely no buzz around him apart from the hardcore fans, this could be the perfect opportunity for the UFC to put him in a sink or swim situation.  If he can win the fight against St. Pierre, it instantly puts him back in contention and gets him some recognition he's been desperately needing.  If he loses, UFC doesn't lose anything because they have plenty of other options to go with at 185 and it does nothing but raises GSP's stock even higher.  The only problem with this situation is what would a loss to Okami do to GSP's stock, even if it was a weight class higher.

I know a lot of this is pure specualtion and a certain Brazilian could render all of this a moot point, but it's still fun to think about these kinds of things and all of these possibilites shows why MMA is such an exciting sport.