It feels as though Carlos Condit has been gone for years.
In truth, it’s only been 14 months, but so much wholesale change has occurred in his absence that, when Condit returns on Saturday to take on Thiago Alves at UFC Fight Night 67, it’ll be to a welterweight division where anything seems possible.
Last we saw the Natural Born Killer, he blew out his knee in the second round of a bout against Tyron Woodley at UFC 171. That was March 15 of last year, on the same fight card where Johny Hendricks edged Robbie Lawler to seize control of the 170-pound title recently vacated by Georges St-Pierre.
Remember that? Barely? Sounds like ancient history, right?
Turns out, the post-GSP era has been a rough ride for several of the UFC’s top welterweights.
For starters, Condit’s injury let a lot of the air out of Woodley’s victory over him. Woodley lost his next fight to Rory MacDonald and has been in rebuilding mode ever since. So far, so good, with back-to-back victories over Dong Hyun Kim and Kelvin Gastelum, but he’s still not knocking on the door of a title shot.
Meanwhile, Hendricks tore his biceps at UFC 171 and—after his own rehab stint—promptly lost the championship in a rematch with Lawler at UFC 181. He rebounded to defeat Matt Brown three months later but now has to wait for Lawler to fight MacDonald in July before he can move any further up the ranks.
End result: Condit re-enters a wide-open division this weekend, somehow only 31 years old and still No. 4 on the UFC’s official rankings. Not too shabby, all things considered.
Alves doesn’t necessarily shape up as the sort of opponent who can help his standing much, but Condit definitely needs a win here if he wants to keep himself ensconced among the 170-pound Top Five.
“I think that this definitely solidifies my spot as a contender,” he told MMAjunkie radio this week. “Thiago’s not ranked really high right now, but it’s only because he was out with injuries for a long time. He’s without a doubt one of the top guys in the division. A win over him is going to put me in the running for a title shot soon.”
Somehow also just 31 years old, Alves missed more than two years owing to a litany of injuries and rehab efforts. He returned last April with a decision win over Seth Baczynski, but then missed another 13 months before notching a second-round TKO of Jordan Mein.
But that Mein win now looks better on paper for Alves than it did in practice. The Brazilian endured a tough first round at the hands of the 25-year-old upstart before stunning him with a body kick early in the second stanza. He’ll roll into this meeting against Condit slotted at No. 12, and with a lot to gain if he can defy the 2-1 odds against him, according to Odds Shark.
And perhaps that’s sort of what makes this fight so interesting. Here we have two former top fighters—Alves faced St-Pierre for the title at UFC 100, Condit has been WEC champion and UFC interim champ—both theoretically still in the thick of their athletic primes.
Yet we don’t really know what to expect from either of them.
Things had not been going particularly well for Condit even before his injury. Counting the Woodley loss—and he was losing, right up to the moment the knee want kablammo—he’s just 1-3 dating back to November 2012. There are people who would tell you he also lost his previous fight to Nick Diaz at UFC 143, but that’s a different column for a different day.
Those three losses came against elite-level competition—St-Pierre and Hendricks, before Woodley—but the middling record coupled with the extended absence leaves us wondering where he fits in with a greatly changed welterweight picture.
The first five years of Condit’s UFC career left the impression he was better than almost anyone in his weight class, but not quite as good as the very best. But now, the sudden departure of St-Pierre and an unstable situation at the top could very well reopen the book on him.
Who’s to say Condit couldn’t defeat Lawler, if the two ended up fighting later this year?
Who’s to say he couldn’t top Hendricks or Woodley in a rematch?
Who’s to say he couldn’t beat MacDonald a second time, just like he did when they were both UFC pups back in 2010?
We won’t know for sure until we see him out there with Alves, though it’s possible a realigned 170-pound class ends up benefiting a guy like Condit most of all.
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