Carlos Condit captured the interim UFC welterweight title in February 2012 by using a well-planned attack (or lack of attack, if you prefer) to defeat Nick Diaz by unanimous decision.
The interim crown was necessitated by the fact that welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre was on the mend after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ACL that he sustained while training.
The Condit win set up a title unification bout with St-Pierre in November 2012. Condit gave the champ a run for his money, but in the end, he was not able to wrest the title from St-Pierre’s grasp, despite dropping the champ with a well-placed head kick in the third round. After five rounds, the unified title went home with St-Pierre.
Condit’s next bout was a spirited Fight of the Night performance against Johny Hendricks on March 16 of this year. The difference in that fight was not the much-vaunted left hand of Hendricks, but his wrestling pedigree, which enabled him to seemingly take down Condit at will.
Those takedowns were most likely the reason the judges awarded the decision to Hendricks, lining up Hendricks to face the winner of the main event of that evening’s St-Pierre-Nick Diaz bout.
St-Pierre had little difficulty defeating Diaz via decision, in effect cementing a St-Pierre vs. Hendricks title fight at some point in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.
Having battled both fighters, it only makes sense to get Condit‘s opinion on who he thinks will walk out of the Octagon when St-Pierre and Hendricks do meet. Appearing on the most recent edition of AXS TV’s Inside MMA, Condit offered the following:
I’m going to have to go with Georges St-Pierre. Georges St. Pierre—he’s just a more polished fighter. Johny Hendricks, he’s dangerous and he’s got good skills, but he is a little rough around the edges when it comes to his whole game. And Georges is just such a technician. He puts things together so well and is just a sharp, clean fighter, and I think that’s going to make the difference in that matchup.
The bout between St-Pierre and Hendricks has not been given a date or location at this point.
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