For Carlos Condit, UFC 143 will determine if he’ll leave the Mandalay Bay Events Center as the interim welterweight champion, a feat which will ultimately culminate in his rite of passage to Georges St-Pierre’s perennial crown.
That said, without the first, Condit can’t achieve the last, which would presumably leave him between a rock and a hard place.
However, truth be told, at the end of the night’s proceedings, triumphant or vanquished, the “Natural Born Killer” will be in a win-win situation.
When Nick Diaz was demoted from the headline act to the co-main event on the UFC 137 card for failing to turn up at several promotional press conferences, Condit was on hand to accept Dana White‘s call as the replacement to challenge for St-Pierre’s title.
The initial fight was cancelled due to a knee injury sustained to the Canadian and was finally flushed down the drain when Diaz called out “Rush” following his points victory over B.J. Penn (Condit’s original opponent for the co-main event) in the newly revamped UFC 137 main-eventer.
Condit was kindly asked to step aside to allow St-Pierre to duke it out with the Stockton native.
The Greg Jackson fighter bit his tongue and swallowed his pride with the mindset of “let the chips fall where they may.”
As fate would have it, St-Pierre suffered a recurrence of the injury, putting his slated matchup with Diaz on the back burner, thus leaving the door open for Condit to contest for the provisional 170-lb. belt while the champion recuperated.
What Condit has done up until now suggests that he’s in fact a company man, and for most employers that is a dream employee—he toes the line, doesn’t rock the boat and basically does as he’s told.
As a consequence of his company-first and me-later approach, things can only get better for him in the Zuffa-based promotion; more importantly, White and the Fertitta brothers won’t forget what he did for them in a long while.
This is how things will play out for the Natural Born Killer at the night’s end: A draw would indicate that Diaz gets the title shot and Condit will more than likely face the winner of that bout.
However, if the worst-case scenario were to transpire and he lost, the odds are he’ll be vying for the welterweight Holy Grail in the not-too-distant future.
Conversely, if he wins, it’s a sure-fire bet he’s the next challenger to St-Pierre and his coveted crown.
Either way, Condit is in a win-win situation.
UFC 143 is scheduled for Feb. 4, 2012, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nev.
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