Filed under: UFC
Carlos Condit had just finished doing about an hour of phone interviews to hype his title fight against Georges St-Pierre at UFC 137 when he heard the bad news.
St-Pierre was out with a knee injury, the bout was postponed, and the welterweight tilt between B.J. Penn and Nick Diaz would now take the main event spot on October 29.
“It was a surprise,” Condit told MMA Fighting on Tuesday afternoon. “…This has probably been the longest training camp of my career. Everything’s been going well, and then I get the call that [St-Pierre] is hurt. It took the wind out of my sails to say the least.”
Instead of getting his long-awaited shot at the UFC welterweight title at the end of the month, Condit is now off the UFC 137 card altogether. He’ll wait until the champ is healthy and the fight can be rescheduled, he said, since St-Pierre isn’t expected to be sidelined too long. With a relatively short time to wait, Condit said, taking another fight in the interim “just doesn’t make any sense.”
“From the sound of it, Georges, his recovery time isn’t going to be six months or anything like that,” said Condit. “From what I heard, they’re looking at more like six weeks. To take another fight just doesn’t make sense.”
The setback is obviously disappointing for Condit, who was pulled out of a bout with Penn and slotted into the title fight after Diaz’s press conference no-shows got him yanked from the main event, but the challenger said he’s doing his best to maintain a positive outlook.
“I’ll just have more time to work on things,” he said. “This is what I do for a living. This is my job, is to get up every day and go train. Not much has changed.”