Ok, so last year when my brother texted me the catastrophic news that George St. Pierre had sustained a knee injury and would no longer be fighting to defend his title, I may have taken it a little too hard, but after speaking with the crisis hotline, I put down the can of gasoline and decided that not burning the whole world down would probably work out better for me in the long run.
More than six months later, and the guy is still in rehab with no set date for his return. For MMA fans, this sucks, but luckily for us, there are plenty of other badasses ready to beat the living hell out of each other for our viewing pleasure.
That said, the crazy ass Diaz-Condit affair—for those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, please see the internet—offered a temporary distraction from our suddenly GSP-less world. Well, that sh*t is old now and I want to see more epic violence!!!
My solution to the problem is simple.
Martin Kampmann and Rory Macdonald should fight for a shot at Condit’s belt:
Here are my top 10 reasons why:
1. Welterweight god, George St. Pierre, straight up told UFC Central in an interview that he does not realistically expect to be in the cage before November, which is pretty much another six months. He won’t even be training full out until July. Weak…
2. If the “Natural Born Killer” waits until GSP’s return, he will have held the interim title for 10 months without a single defense…that is a long time to not defend a belt plenty of people (all Nick Diaz fans) think he shouldn’t have in the first place. Hey I’m a huge Condit fan but let’s be honest, the fight with Diaz could have been scored either way. If NBK wants to be widely recognized as a legitimate UFC champion—I say this knowing full well that Condit viciously defended his WEC title several times, and is in fact totally legit—he needs to fight a motherf@!*er or two.
3. GANJA! Nick “F*ck You” Diaz’ unbridled love of the marijuana combined with an unforgiving NSAC hearing completely screwed up the rematch that was supposed to go down with Condit, robbing fans of what would have surely been a very entertaining spectacle of brutality.
4. Martin “The Hitman” Kampmann has been on an insane tear lately, choking out Thiago Alves (dude was coming off his own submission victory) and KO’ing Jake “The Juggernaut” Ellenburger, who, by the way, has 17 tko/ko victories of his own in 27 professional victories. What is really impressive is when you consider that, besides Kampmann, NO ONE ELSE HAS DONE THIS TO HIM in over 30 pro fights.
5. The Hitman has already beaten Carlos Condit once before, which definitely supports his case for at the very least a shot at the number one contender spot.
6. Rory “Ares” MacDonald is also on a crazy winning streak, absolutely dominating guys like Nate Diaz and Che Mills. These are some very scary men and yet MacDonald freaking molested them on national television almost effortlessly. For God’s sake man, he suplexed Nate “I ain’t no b*tch” Diaz three times in like .04 seconds.
7. MacDonald lost by tko to Condit already. But, hey what?!?! Wait a minute, how does that help your argument, John? Well if you were paying attention to that fight, the first two rounds clearly belong to Rory. Referee Kevin Dornan’s controversial stoppage with only seven seconds left in the final round gave Condit the win, but the scorecards show that had he not stopped it when he did, MacDonald would have picked up the split decision from the judges. So while not quite as good as Kampmann’s decision win over Condit, at the very least it raises the question, “How much better is Rory now and could he take the rematch?”
8. I know this probably would never happen because Rory and GSP are BBL’s (Best Bros for Life) but how crazy would it be if MacDonald took the title and then GSP came back and there was all this Jon Jones/Rashad Evans style drama about how they don’t want to fight each other but then maybe they develop bad blood or something…I don’t know. They could sell it…I leave the marketing to the UFC. At the very least it would open the door for some very interesting matches down the road i.e Koscheck/MacDonald, Hendricks/Condit etc. In the end whoever has the interim title is really only keeping it warm until GSP has healed up.
9. It would probably win the “Fight of the Night” award.
10. I really just want to see this fight happen…
I can’t be the only one, right?
Cheers people!
By John Rivera