It’s funny how quickly things can change.
On Saturday night following a unanimous decision loss to Carlos Condit, Nick Diaz announced that he didn’t “need this s**t” and was most likely going to walk away from MMA. That retirement may have to wait.
Late Tuesday night, UFC president Dana White tweeted, “the rumor is true. Carlos did accept the fight today and Carlos is coming on Friday not thur.” That effectively confirmed a rumor that had been circulating earlier in the day that Diaz and Condit would meet in a rematch.
Diaz and Condit met on Feb. 4 in the main event of UFC 143. Heading into the bout, fans were most likely expecting two of the best strikers in the welterweight division to stand toe-to-toe and throw down. Instead, what they got was a masterful game plan from Carlos Condit.
Condit and his camp at Jackson’s MMA knew exactly what Diaz’s game plan was for this fight—hell, everyone knew what Diaz’s game plan was going to be for the fight: Get Condit up against the cage and pepper him with as many strikes as humanly possible.
Instead of accepting that type of scrap, Condit opted to stay mobile during the fight, backing up, never letting Diaz pin him against the fence and yet delivering more overall strikes and earning the unanimous decision victory.
The style in which the fight was won may have left some fans disappointed, and it definitely left Diaz disappointed.
“I pushed this guy backwards. He ran from me the whole fight. He ran this whole fight,” Diaz said during his in-cage post-fight interview. “I landed the harder shots. He ran the whole time. He kicked me in the leg with little baby leg kicks the whole fight. That’s the way they understand to win in here. I don’t want to play this game no more.”
What the fans wanted and what Diaz said after the loss, none of it mattered because the scorecards said that Condit was the new interim UFC welterweight champion and he, not Diaz, walked out of the Mandalay Bay Events Center with UFC gold around his waist.
While White’s tweet shouldn’t be seen as a confirmation of the fight, it does imply something is in the works, for if the fighters both want it, there is no reason not to make this rematch happen.
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