I can’t wrap my head around that fact that Johnny Hendricks won’t be getting the next crack at the welterweight title. This isn’t the first time a fighter has had to wait for a title fight, but this may be the most disturbing, seeing that Hendricks is the clear number one contender. Anyone that believes that Nick Diaz is more deserving of a fight with Georges St-Pierre is a fool, plain and simple.
Nick Diaz is coming off a loss in his last fight against Carlos Condit. People argue that Diaz should’ve been awarded the win against Condit, but he lost. In the history of the UFC, no fighter has ever been awarded a title shot while coming off a loss, with the exception of immediate rematches due to controversy or if there were no other options due to injury. Johnny Hendricks is on a five fight win streak and is injury free, so no one can say there aren’t other options for opponents. The controversial decision excuse doesn’t apply, because it’s not as if Diaz is fighting Carlos Condit. He chose to cry about his loss to Condit and then “retire” from MMA, and now his first fight back will be for the belt. Does this make sense to anyone?
The only reason Diaz was considered for a title shot in the first place was because at the time, he was the Strikeforce champion, and it was intriguing to see two champions fight each other. If Diaz wasn’t the Strikeforce champion, no one would think that he deserved to fight Georges St-Pierre. Before he came back to the UFC, he had beaten KJ Noons, Evangelista Santos, and Paul Daley; not the strongest argument that your next in line to fight the UFC champ. I agree that after beating BJ Penn at UFC 137, Diaz’s scheduled title fight with GSP was justified. Unfortunately for him, Condit stepped in as a replacement, beat him, and now that Penn looks like he should retire after loosing to Rory MacDonald, Diaz doesn’t have much of an argument that he still deserves a title fight.
The only angle that Dana White could be playing, is the pay-per-view buys. If I had to guess, I’d say that a fight between Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz would sell more pay-per-views than Georges St-Pierre and Johnny Hendricks. This would arguably create a small boost in revenue for the UFC and would be an understandable business move, but as a boss, it’s as if he is denying a hardworking employee a promotion, that he clearly deserves, just to make a few more bucks.
I respect Dana White for everything he does and the decisions he makes, but regardless of his reason for giving Diaz a title shot before Hendricks, I strongly disagree, and I don’t think it can be justified by anyone. If Dana White won’t reconsider, then I implore him not make the same mistake in the future, as I’m certain that the real MMA fans find this as baffling as I do.
Written by : Ryan “Fight Freek” Poli
@FightFreek