Author: By Thomas Gerbasi

The look on Bob Dunham’s face said a thousand words, maybe even more. As he waited for the van to transport him back to a hotel in Killeen, Texas after watching his son’s second professional loss as a mixed martial artist, you felt for a man who was going through a father’s nightmare – the aftermath of seeing his child knocked out.

“I don’t think it was the best day for him,” said Evan Dunham, lightweight star on the rise who was the recipient of that first round defeat to Melvin Guillard in January.

Duham stood close to his father, and his expression was more of disappointment than anything. He had soared into the ranks of lightweight contenders with an 11-0 record, and even his first defeat in September of 2010, via controversial decision to former champion Sean Sherk, was seen as a win in the eyes of most. There would be no debate about this one though, and it’s something his father had never witnessed when it came to his son.

“Unfortunately in this sport when you lose it can sometimes be kind of brutal, but it wasn’t as bad as a lot of people might have thought,” said Evan. “He (Guillard) definitely dropped me and rocked me, but I didn’t go out or anything like that and I didn’t break anything in my face, which is always nice. (Laughs) It was a rough one, but he’s supportive, and that’s the main thing.”

If it doesn’t sound like Dunham has any lingering scars from the Guillard fight, it’s because there aren’t any. The way he – and his peers – see it, this is just part of the game. Sometimes you’re the hammer, and sometimes you’re the nail. And the ones who take the hammer role more often are the ones who succeed in this game and become champions. If Dunham needed any encouragement, all he had to do was look around at his teammates and the man whose name adorns the Xtreme Couture facility in Las Vegas, Randy Couture. All of them have suffered setbacks in one way, shape, or form, but while the circumstances might be different, the end result was the same: they all returned to the gym and got back to work.

“A lot of them have been there, and I’m just trying deal with it and wait for the next one,” said Dunham, who has been sidelined since the bout, in part due to an injury which scrapped him from a UFC 132 return against George Sotiropoulos. “It’s part of our sport, and the tough part is, in most other sports, you take a loss and get back on the winning track real soon, whether it be the next week or the next month. But in our sport it takes a while for that opportunity to come by again, so it stings for a while. But they (his teammates) have given me good advice and I’ve listened to them and I’m confident that I’m gonna go out there and win this fight and get back in the win column.”

On Saturday, Dunham makes his first start since the beginning of the year against Ultimate Fighter 13 veteran Shamar Bailey. It’s been a long wait for the Oregon native, but he’s finally starting to see the finish line in New Orleans approaching.

“You count the days down until it’s that time, but I’ve been handling it pretty good though,” he said. “A little break was nice at first, but it’s definitely starting to mount up.”

Truth be told, Dunham was pushing it pretty hard in 2010. Fresh from two 2009 wins that kicked off his UFC career, he put in nearly nine complete rounds of work last year, submitting Efrain Escudero in the third round of a back and forth battle, and then decisioning teammate Tyson Griffin before the bloody and grueling Fight of the Night split decision loss to Sherk. Four months later came the loss to Guillard.

“I think my body needed a break,” he said. “I don’t know if my mind did. It’s one of those things where it happened and I can’t look back and you can’t change it. But it would have been nice to definitely have gotten that fight with Sotiropoulos.”

Instead, Dunham had to wait for the next opportunity, which was this upcoming bout with Bailey. That means a lot of time to think, a lot of time to hear and read other people’s opinions, and for some, a perfect opportunity to take things into the MMA version of a mad scientist’s lab in order to try to figure out how 11 straight wins turned into two consecutive losses. The level headed Dunham didn’t go down that road though.

“I don’t think it was a thing of having to reevaluate everything,” he said. “I definitely think I was overtraining myself a little bit for those last few fights, not just including those two, so I’ve actually changed my training just a bit to let my body heal. And I don’t think that was anything that showed in my last two fights. With Melvin, he’s a great fighter and he caught me slipping. There were a few things that I would like to have changed in that fight, but you can’t now, so I’ll just correct them in the future. With the Sherk fight, I honestly think it was one of the better performances of my career. It sucks that I lost, but I try to look at it as a win, even though it’s hard to do sometimes. Everybody I’ve ever talked to thinks I won that fight, and I think I won that fight, so recently I’ve tried to not look at it as a loss, even though it is.”

Again, it shows the maturity of a 29-year old fighter who knows that the sky isn’t falling. He’s just weathered a couple of thunderstorms and is ready to get back to work. In this sport, everyone loses, especially at this level of the game. It’s what you do with those losses that determine your future.

“It’s definitely frustrating, but there’s not much you can do about it,” he said. “I just keep training and keep my mind focused. It’s one of those things that’s tough to swallow, but it motivates you to get in the gym and keep working hard. I got there once before and I can get there again. I’m just trying to stay positive.”

The first step is Bailey.

“I haven’t really seen a whole lot of him,” said Dunham of the Indianapolis standout. “I’ve only seen maybe two or three of his fights. He looks like a strong, athletic guy who likes to close that distance and then get on top of you and do nothing with it. I’m prepared for him to try to take me down and hug me, and that’s exactly what I’m ready for. And if that changes, and if he wants to do something else, he’s more than welcome, but I don’t see him doing that to me. I fought guys a lot tougher than him, so I’m more than ready for this fight.”

You believe him too, and with Bailey making his lightweight debut and determined to make an immediate impression in his new weight class, something’s got to give when the bell rings in the Big Easy. Dunham is determined to make sure it’s not him.

“They will be coming at me harder and I usually thrive when people want to make it a fight,” he said. “It’s cool with me and just reinforces the idea that I belong in there as well. I still have a lot to prove and a lot more fights in me that I want in the UFC. If he wants to try and take away what I’ve worked hard for then he’s got something coming.”

A year ago, Dunham was one of the hottest lightweights in the game, with an unbeaten record and all the accolades that go with it. Now, he’s a veteran, hardened by the last two fights and ready to start taking names once again. In this 155-pound division, that’s a task and a half, but in his eyes, that’s the point.

“There are a lot of really tough guys that are hungry in the division, and it’s a pond full of sharks in my opinion,” he said. “No fight’s an easy fight, and you hear everybody say it, but I truly believe it’s the toughest division in the UFC. What really gets me up in the morning is that I’m living my dream and fighting in the organization that I love. There’s no other place in the world that I’d want to be. So knowing that every fight is going to be a war definitely makes you train hard, and you can’t slack if you want to make it, and I definitely don’t.”

Bob Dunham would be proud to hear that from his son, and you can expect him to be right back in his corner this weekend.

“He’s at all my fights,” said Evan of his father. “When I first got into the sport, he didn’t really approve of it that much, but now that he sees how hard I work and he sees that there’s a lot more going on than just a brawl in there, he’s really supportive and really enjoys going to the fights. He understands that it’s part of the sport – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”

 
 

Firemen, like fighters, are cut from a different cloth than most of us. Shamar Bailey is both, and like his buddy and fellow Indianapolis firefighter Chris Lytle, he believes the danger inherent in both professions takes a backseat to the adrenalin rush of the job.

But you can’t escape that danger, so when a fire raged in downtown Indianapolis a week before Bailey was set to leave for Las Vegas and the opportunity of a lifetime as a competitor on season 13 of The Ultimate Fighter, he didn’t hesitate to run into the building to fight an opponent that doesn’t stop when the referee says so.

“We get as close to the fire as possible to keep it from spreading throughout the structure,” said Bailey of the Indianapolis Fire Department’s aggressive approach to combating fires. When you do that, not even the best equipment can completely insulate you from the heat of a raging inferno. Asked to describe it, Bailey said “it’s like you’re in a sauna, and you’ve got the sauna suit on, and it’s burning your skin. That’s how it feels in there and you know the fire’s a lot hotter than what it actually feels like.”

And this fire wasn’t going down easy, so the chief of the department soon made the call to get his guys out of the burning building.

“The chief ordered us to get out of there after fighting it for about 40 minutes,” Bailey recalled. “The second after I got out of there, I turned my back and that place collapsed. I was that close to being inside a collapsed building versus being on The Ultimate Fighter.”

“Those are the kind of things that you deal with on a daily basis and then you put it out of your mind.”

Needless to say, anything Bailey has faced in his 15 pro bouts thus far or in any fight in the future won’t ever compare to what he does when he’s not competing or in the gym. But he does see parallels between his two worlds.

“You pray, you trust God, and you rely on your training,” he said. “It’s the same thing with fighting. You hope and trust that everybody around you executes their training as well as you do, and you hope to do the same and hold up your end of the bargain.”

With that outlook, it’s not surprising that the recently-retired Lytle took an instant liking to the Delaware native, who entered the gym in Indiana (the state he called home since high school) after graduating college, in search of a way to keep in shape. It became much more than that.

“He (Lytle) is one of the biggest reasons I started fighting,” said Bailey. “The very first time I walked into an MMA gym in Indianapolis, my introduction to the sport was Chris. I rolled with him, sparred with him, and I ended up being one of his workout partners before I even decided to fight. And he was one of the main guys that convinced me to fight because of how I would do with him in the practice room. From there, he also convinced me to try out for the Indianapolis Fire Department, who he works for as well. Since 2006, we’ve been training and working together, and it’s been a great relationship.”

In August of 2006, Bailey made his pro debut with a first round TKO of Jason Cook, and ran off seven straight wins until getting halted in fight number eight by Strikeforce standout Roger Bowling. After bouncing back with four more wins, including a Strikeforce submission of John Kolosci in November of 2009, Bailey was watching his gym mates begin getting calls to fight in the UFC, and he was understandably getting antsy.

“I was definitely getting antsy,” he laughs. “In addition to Chris, I had my buddy Jake O’Brien, Johnny Rees, and Matt Mitrione, and there were 4-5 fighters from the Indianapolis area getting into the UFC. Some did better than others, and I was like ‘where’s my shot, where’s my chance?’”

Two losses, one via decision to Justin Wilcox in Strikeforce and one via cuts against Kurt Kinser, put the brakes on his immediate UFC ambitions, but with that door closed, The Ultimate Fighter door opened, and Bailey entered the TUF13 house as one of the veterans and favorites, as well as the first pick of coach Junior dos Santos. After opening things up with a decision win over Nordin Asrih, Bailey lost a close nod to Chris Cope in the quarterfinals. But in a bout on the season finale card in June, he got back in the win column with a victory over Ryan McGillivray, and the way he sees it, everything worked out in the end.

“It’s been a blessing in disguise,” he said. “I think everybody knows me as a wrestler and a lot of people don’t think I have the greatest standup. But the bottom line is, I’ve only been an athlete since my senior year of high school, when I started wrestling, and since then, wrestling’s all I’ve known. I just started boxing a little over a year ago, and kickboxing finally, and that’s being added to my repertoire. I’m a fast learner and I think I’m gonna perform a lot better now than I would have if I had gotten into the UFC a couple years ago. Everything has worked out for a reason.”

That doesn’t mean it’s all been smooth sailing, and Bailey has received his share of criticism for his wrestling-based attack, one which – whether you like or not – has been effective, as his shutout of McGillivray proves. And it goes back to that old adage, if you don’t like the way someone fights you, stop him. Bailey, whose intent is to put on entertaining bouts, can understand both sides of the debate.

“The fans have a right to complain,” he said. “Obviously they pay their money, and at the end of the day we’re professional athletes and we’re supposed to entertain them, but if the opponent’s going to complain, then I agree a hundred percent with what you say – ‘do something about it.’ It’s funny to me because if you look at a fight like Charlie Brenneman vs. Rick Story, everybody thought that was an amazing fight, but that was mostly a wrestling match. But when somebody sees a superior athlete dominate somebody with wrestling versus knocking them out, I think they’re expected to be knockout artists, and wrestlers get a bad rap when we dominate somebody else with what we’re good at. I that’s where a lot of the complaining comes from, when it’s a one-sided affair.”

In New Orleans this Saturday night, it certainly won’t be a one-sided affair when Bailey drops down to the 155-pound weight class to face highly regarded Evan Dunham. Dunham is hungry to snap a two fight losing streak, and Bailey is looking for both a win and a willing dance partner. We’ll find out about the end result this weekend, but when it comes to the dance partner, Bailey knows Dunham is coming to fight, and that’s just what he asked for.

“I had hinted that I wanted tough fights and that I wanted to test myself,” he said. “I wanted to fight somebody that I didn’t have to chase around the cage, and when I go to the ground they’re not just gonna hold on to me for dear life. So I was very excited, and I believe that this is a message to me that I need to show what I’m capable of and there’s no room to underperform here.”

Not these days, and definitely not at 155 pounds. If you don’t win and win impressively here, there are a bunch of hungry sharks waiting to take your place. No one knows that better than Bailey.

“Obviously winning is the number one thing and the priority,” he said. “I realize that as fighters, we’re privileged to fight in the UFC, it’s not a right. So in addition to wanting to win, first and foremost, I do realize that there’s a certain product that they’re looking for and they want to promote exciting fighters. They’re not gonna put anyone that’s boring on Fox network cards. I think it takes an athletic fighter and a smart fighter to be able to both win and win in an exciting fashion. And a lot of times, it’s all about the matchups. You get a matchup where his fighting style is not going to be conducive to being exciting, then you just gotta grind out the win. If both styles match up well, then you can make the most of that matchup, and that’s why I’m excited about this fight with Evan Dunham. I think it’s a matchup where there’s either gonna be a quick finish or it’s gonna be an exciting fight.”

Nearly 24 hours after his world changed, everything finally started to set in for the new challenger for Georges St-Pierre’s UFC welterweight title, Carlos Condit.

“Little by little,” he chuckled as he wrapped up a day of media in Las Vegas to promote UFC 137’s new main event on October 29th. On Wednesday morning he was on the card, but in a bout against former two division UFC champion BJ Penn. But by the afternoon, everything got thrown into the blender.

“I had been pretty focused on training for my fight with BJ, and the first I heard of it (a possible change in the main event) I saw something on Twitter about him (Nick Diaz) not showing up to the press conference, and then 45 minutes later, I was slated to fight Georges.”

It was a surreal moment for all involved and even for those watching from the outside. Diaz was pulled from the GSP bout for missing both stops on the media tour and being unreachable by UFC management, and Condit got a call from UFC President Dana White asking him if he would like to fight for the title.

“I accepted immediately, and I got pretty choked up,” he said. “It’s been a long road, a lot of ups and downs, and to be at this point is amazing, and pretty emotional, to be honest.”

Getting that call out of the blue to replace an injured fighter in a championship bout is something many fighters visualize in their head during every training camp. It wasn’t in Condit’s repertoire though…well, at least until he finished up his UFC 132 win over Dong Hyun Kim.

“In the last couple of months it definitely went through my head,” he admitted. “After my last fight against Dong Hyun Kim, I told my manager that I was getting right back into the gym. Something might happen to Diaz, and that was even before I was scheduled to fight BJ. So I got right back into training with the thought that you never know what can happen. And it seemed to work out pretty well.”

It certainly did. And while some outside the fight game would look at a short notice fight against Georges St-Pierre as a punishment and not a reward, fighters like Condit crave such an opportunity, and as a former champion himself, the man who ran the WEC’s welterweight division knows a little something about preparing for title fights.

“It helps to have been there before, but Georges has fought a lot more championship rounds than I have, and even though I had a lot of five round fights, I finished most of them in the first or the second round,” said Condit, who won four title fights during his 2007-08 reign as the WEC’s last 170-pound champ. “Only one of those fights actually went into the championship rounds (a fourth round TKO of Hiromitsu Miura in 2008), so he has more experience in that aspect, and as far as the pressure goes with big fights, I’ve been there and I think that gives me the advantage over other contenders.”

He’s not just counting on his experience and a four fight win streak to carry him to victory this fall though, as he knows just how good the long-reigning king from Montreal is.

“Georges is an incredible fighter,” said Condit. “He’s been able to take down a lot of better wrestlers than me, so that’s definitely a problem. But I’ve gone a big part of my career fighting bigger, stronger wrestling-based guys who have wanted to take me down and lay on me, and I’ve been successful for the most part. So that’s something I have experience dealing with. He’s a strong athletic guy and he has the experience, and he obviously has a pretty good formula for winning these fights, but the other guys he’s faced, they’re not me, and I think I’m gonna bring something different to the table.”

One thing neither fighter will be bringing to the big show is trainer Greg Jackson, who won’t work either corner at UFC 137. Condit will be staying at home in Albuquerque and continuing his camp in the Jackson’s MMA gym though, so even though Jackson isn’t involved, it’s as close to business as usual for “The Natural Born Killer” as you can get.

“That’s where I train,” said Condit. “I know Georges has a lot of different resources, and he travels all over the place, but I don’t really have that luxury. Jackson’s Gym is where I train and I completely understand that Greg has to kinda separate himself from the fight. This is something that I knew before this fight was ever even talked about, and it’s something that I planned for. I already had my ducks in a row as to who was gonna train me in case this fight went down, so I’m confident. I’m gonna be training with Mike Winklejohn and a guy named Chris Luttrell, who was one of the founding members of Jackson’s.”

Confident and ready, Condit is showing no signs of being rattled by the growing spotlight or the last minute change in plans. In fact, he’s embracing it, and if you read between the lines, it’s almost as if his surprise title shot is his destiny.

“I’m as motivated as I’ve ever been, I’m definitely coming into my prime as a fighter and as an athlete, and this is as good a time as any for me to take this fight,” he said.

Always a master of the understatement, the unfailingly polite Georges St-Pierre one-upped himself when he summed up his Wednesday in Las Vegas with a simple “It’s been a very interesting day.”

The UFC welterweight champion chuckled when he said it, knowing that there were really no words to describe a day that began with him getting ready for a press conference to talk about his October 29th bout with Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz and ended with him now fighting Carlos Condit in the UFC 137 main event.

“I found out just before the press conference,” said St-Pierre of the switch in opponents. “Lorenzo (Fertitta) and Dana (White) said that to me and it was crazy. It sucked, but it is what it is. I’m a professional. For me, I don’t understand.”

What he (and the majority of the mixed martial arts world) didn’t understand was why Diaz would no-show press conferences in Toronto (Tuesday) and Las Vegas (Wednesday), miss three flights in the process, and then be unreachable by the UFC and even his own manager / trainer Cesar Gracie. Finally, White had enough and he pulled the plug on the bout, awarding the title shot to Condit.

“It surprised me a lot,” said St-Pierre of Diaz’ behavior. “The reason why I train and why I make sacrifices every day is to be the best in the world, and if I have this opportunity I would never miss it. I just don’t understand why he missed an opportunity like this.”

Condit, winner of four in a row, with his last three victories all earning post-fight bonuses, won’t let this chance pass him by though, and St-Pierre is no stranger to the former WEC champion known as “The Natural Born Killer.”

“All the time I kept my eyes on Carlos a little bit,” said the two-time welterweight champ from Montreal. “He’s a very good fighter, and now that it’s official that I’m gonna fight him, it’s gonna be a tough fight.”

The two also have a connection due to their work with trainer Greg Jackson and his Jackson’s MMA camp in Albuquerque. St-Pierre says the two never trained together in the gym, but that Jackson is opting to sit this October fight out.

“We never did work together, but we had the same training partners,” said St-Pierre. “Greg is gonna step away and he’s not gonna coach Carlos and he’s not going to coach me. But I’m not mad at Carlos – I think it’s the opportunity of a lifetime for him and I’m grateful that he took the opportunity and gave me a fight because I need the fight too. We’re both gonna go there and the best man will win.”

It’s the usual class you expect from St-Pierre, and he always delivers. Even in the midst of Wednesday’s crazy storm, he didn’t lose his cool. That’s what has kept him unbeaten since 2007 and what has made him the top welterweight in the world. But the 30-year old champion won’t take all the credit for it.

“It comes from the way I’ve been raised by my parents and years of training in traditional martial arts,” he said. That’s why my mentality is like that. It’s who I am, I’m a real guy, I don’t lie, and I do my thing. I’m surprised and I’m taken off-guard, but stuff like that happens in the business.”

And now it’s time for St-Pierre to get back to business, breaking down Condit and preparing for another big fight on the biggest stage in the sport. October 29th. That’s going to be the kind of interesting day GSP will look forward to.

“It’s a good fight and I’m ready to go.”

Alistair Overeem ended 2010 with four fights: three in one night on December 11th en route to a K-1 World Grand Prix title, and then a 19 second blast-out of Todd Duffee on New Year’s Eve.

This December, “The Reem” will get ready for the New Year in more sedate fashion. This time, he’ll make just one trip up those four steps, but it will be a biggie, as he will compete in the UFC for the first time on December 30th against former heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.

It was the news that captivated the mixed martial arts world on Tuesday, a blistering wake-up call to those still sleepy from the Labor Day weekend – Overeem, the former Strikeforce heavyweight champion, had signed with the UFC and was kicking off his career in the Octagon with one of the biggest bouts of the year.

That’s quite an entrance, and for once, it was news that wasn’t met with any negativity by the usual naysayers. Overeem isn’t surprised either.

“I think this is big news and a big development,” he told UFC.com. “It’s one of those dream matchups – you have two big guys, one of them specializes in wrestling, one specializes in striking, and everybody wants to see it. There was a lot spoken about this dream matchup in the past, but it couldn’t materialize because I wasn’t in the UFC, but now that I am, anything is possible. I already received a lot of emails and messages from people who congratulated me; they’re happy I joined, and they’ve very happy with this matchup.”

That’s not surprising. If you were going to create a prototype of a heavyweight prizefighter, Overeem is the blueprint. 6-4, 265 pounds, with knockout power in his fists, feet, and knees, the imposing 31-year old from the Netherlands certainly looks the part, and when the bell sounds, he delivers the goods as well, as his title winning efforts in Strikeforce, K-1, and Dream prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Yet despite being unbeaten in MMA over the last four years (10-0, 1 NC), there has always been the question of whether we would ever see him compete against the best heavyweights in the UFC. Overeem wondered the same thing, but he also believed his eventual arrival was inevitable.

“I did always expect myself to get into the UFC at one point in my career,” he said. “I didn’t know when that was gonna be, but I did always see myself in the UFC at some time.”

And while he battled it out in PRIDE (mainly as a light heavyweight), Dream, Strikeforce, and K-1, he kept his eye on his peers Stateside.

“You want to keep track of your competition, so of course I watched the UFC heavyweight division very closely to see who was in there and what they were doing,” he said, before giving his current scouting report. “They’re strong, big guys and I truly believe they belong at the top of the world, so it does pose a challenge and I definitely need to step up my game. You have the wrestling guys in the UFC, and the big guys, but lately, especially with (Junior) dos Santos and (Cain) Velasquez, they’re mixing it up with striking really well.”

If Overeem wins his UFC debut in December, he will be seeing the winner of the November 12th title bout between champion Velasquez and challenger dos Santos, and whoever it is, that’s another dream matchup. And just think of Overeem in the Octagon with guys like Shane Carwin, Frank Mir, Pat Barry, and “Minotauro” Nogueira. The intriguing matchups are endless, and Overeem is excited about such possibilities.
 
“I think I have a lot of great matchups,” he said. “I think any one of these guys is willing to fight and not evade the fight, but truly fight and show their best, so I think that ultimately the winners will be the fans. They’re gonna see some great matchups with me in the future and I’m excited about that.”

First up is Lesnar, the former heavyweight champ who will be returning to action for the first time since October of 2010. But after surgery to take care of his diverticulitis, Lesnar expects to be back in fearsome form come December, and the best Brock is what Overeem is looking forward to facing.

“He’s a very strong, very dangerous, and very explosive heavyweight,” said Overeem of Lesnar. “I think he’s kind of unique in the way he operates and fights, and there are some weaknesses in his game, but I think everybody has weaknesses. Overall, I see him as a very dangerous heavyweight.”

It takes one to know one, but beyond the excitement that Overeem is injecting into the UFC heavyweight division is the fact that should he win the championship, he may just end up as the most decorated fighter the weight class has ever seen. That would be pretty impressive.

“Of course it’s crossed my mind when I think about it, but I’m not occupied with it,” he said when asked about his legacy. “I’m more occupied with the day-to-day routine. If I think about it, I did pull off some amazing things that no other fighter did, and that does sort of make me proud, but I’ve got to stay focused. Previous results don’t guarantee the future.”

And where you are in January doesn’t necessarily dictate where you are in December. Just ask Alistair Overeem.

“I actually had a lot of people ask me that (in January, about being in the UFC), and I said ‘well, I’m under contract, so I don’t see that happening,’” he recalled. “The Strikeforce GP was going to be the main priority. But things changed. Last year that was also the case. I fought Brett Rogers and after I was supposed to fight Fedor (Emelianenko), but he declined, and that actually forced me to go into the K-1 and I won that belt. So I’m okay with change.”

So are UFC fans.
 

A wild week for the Ultimate Fighting Championship just got wilder on
Wednesday afternoon, as UFC President Dana White revealed in a Las Vegas
press conference that the man challenging for UFC welterweight champion
Georges St-Pierre’s title on October 29th in Las Vegas won’t be
Strikeforce 170-pound king Nick Diaz, but “The Natural Born Killer,”
Carlos Condit.

The shocking news came after Diaz no-showed a press conference in
Toronto Tuesday and did the same thing in Vegas. After not returning
subsequent phone calls, White decided to pull the Stockton, California native from
the main event of UFC 137.

“I’ve had my reservations about Nick Diaz for some time,” said White.
“All I asked the kid to do was play the game this much (holding fingers slightly apart). I need you to do
certain things. You have to show up to the press conference, you have to
promote this fight. He looked at me and said he would, and he lied to
me. I’ve promoted over 1600 fights and this has never happened once.
I’d rather pull the fight now than risk him not showing up on the night of the fight. This blows my mind.”

“Nick Diaz has lost his chance at the welterweight championship, and Carlos Condit gets it. This kid absolutely deserves it.”

Not hesitating to step into Diaz’ place is another worthy challenger in
Condit, a former WEC welterweight champion who has hit his stride in the
UFC, winning four in a row. Included are three consecutive knockouts of
Rory MacDonald, Dan Hardy, and Dong Hyun Kim. The 27-year old from
Albuquerque was already in camp preparing for a UFC 137 bout with BJ
Penn when the call came to replace Diaz.

Montreal’s St-Pierre, unbeaten in nine fights since 2007, has barely
lost a round in that time frame, defeating Penn, Matt Hughes, Matt
Serra, Josh Koscheck, Jon Fitch, Thiago Alves, Dan Hardy, and Jake
Shields. Now he will prepare to turn back the challenge of Condit on
October 29th.

“When I went to Toronto and he didn’t make it, I didn’t judge it right
away,” said St-Pierre. “I thought something bad happened. Then I talked
to some people and it’s a lack of professionalism. There are three
partners to promote a fight – the UFC, me, and Nick Diaz. I showed up to
do my job and Nick Diaz didn’t, and there are consequences. I would
have never done something like that.”

Wednesday’s news came on the heels of a week in which the UFC announced plans for the organization’s return to Japan in 2012, the signing of Alistair Overeem, an Overeem-Brock Lesnar bout in December, a Ben Henderson–Clay Guida November bout, and replaced the injured Diego Sanchez with Josh Koscheck in the UFC 135 co-main event on September 24th.

There was no news yet on Diaz’ future in the organization or on a new opponent for Penn.