Stockton native Nick Diaz claims that Georges St-Pierre is “crazy” to let a potential superfight with middleweight champion Anderson Silva slip away.
But what if Diaz was in GSP’s shoes?
According to him, he would be asking for a match with the No. 1 fighter in the world anyway, whether it was “The Spider” or anyone else.
As Diaz told the UFC during a brief video interview, his single major critique of St-Pierre stems from the fact that “Rush” supposedly “never” asks to fight the best guys in the world:
I will tell you right now, I want to fight the No. 1 fighter in the world. I always said that I want to fight the No. 1 fighter. Georges has never said that.
The only thing I’ve ever said negatively about Georges is that if I were in his place, I would do more. I would be asking for the Anderson Silva fight. I wouldn’t let that blow away. That’s crazy.
Shortly after St-Pierre returned to the Octagon at UFC 154 and defeated former interim welterweight champion Carlos Condit, UFC president Dana White began to campaign very heavily for a GSP vs. Silva superfight to take place as soon as May 2013.
However, neither St-Pierre’s camp nor Silva’s trainers at Black House MMA could agree on a suitable weight limit for the bout.
In particular, Tristar Gym’s Firas Zahabi claimed that Silva being “weakened” with a cut to 170 pounds would be the only fair solution, while Silva’s conditioning coach claimed that cut a drastic weight drop was inherently unfair to the larger fighter.
For now, St-Pierre must contend with Diaz, who says that the champion’s heavy wrestling advantage won’t help him in what figures to be a five-round battle:
You’re gonna take me down? OK. Now you have to deal with problems on the ground, so you might not want to do that. Condit didn’t want to do that. He wanted to run away from me, because he didn’t want to do that.
I’m saying right now, I don’t give a f— if he takes me down, then. Stand up, take me down, it’s going to be a fight. It’s going to be five rounds.
Notably, St-Pierre has gone to a decision in six of his last seven fights, with only a technical fourth-round stoppage being scored against B.J. Penn at UFC 94.
Comparatively, Diaz has far more finishes to his credit, with four stoppages via submission and a TKO in his last seven bouts.
Diaz has also notched a rare TKO finish against former UFC and Bellator MMA talent Paul Daley—marking just one of the English fighter’s only two losses via strikes in 45 professional matches.
But during the main-event title match at UFC 158 on March 16 in Montreal’s Bell Centre, the big question mark will be whether Diaz’s relentless pressure can upset the champion’s five-year reign. Although it’s expected that St-Pierre can likely win a decision, stopping Diaz via strikes or submission might be a far more difficult task.
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