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Quote of the Day: GSP Says He’s Not the Welterweight Champ Anymore

(Georges is so pumped to fight Diaz, he wears his fight gear while he hobbles around outside all of the local Stockton head shops.)

With all of the criticism Georges St-Pierre has gotten the past few years for his conservative style of fighting, sometimes people overlook just how much the dominant UFC welterweight kingpin purveys the blueprint of how a champion should act both inside and outside of the Octagon.

In a recent interview he did for UFC.com, St-Pierre said that because he hasn’t been active lately due to a pair of knee injuries, he doesn’t consider himself to be the UFC welterweight title holder anymore and that he will need to beat the winner of the interim title bout between Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit Saturday night to once again become the champ.

(Georges is so pumped to fight Diaz, he wears his fight gear while he hobbles around outside all of the local Stockton head shops.)

“The way I see it, I am not the champion anymore on Saturday night. I have not fought since April, against my will, but I understand the champion must fight. You have to put the belt on the line in order to call yourself champion, the best in the world. Right now I am not the best in the world, I am injured. The winner of this fight on Saturday will be more than just the new number one contender, but he won’t be the new champion either,” St-Pierre explains. “The winner of this fight will have to beat me to become the true world champion and I will have to beat the winner of this fight in order to call myself the best in the world again.I like the format where the winner of this fight will have to fight me and I have to fight the winner to truly become the UFC champion. That is what the UFC is about,that is competition. This is fair to all of us, we have to beat each other to be the undisputed champion.”

“Rush” also reiterated his statement that he’s cheering for Diaz to win because he wants to pay the former Strikeforce champion back for a series of insults he’s slung at him the past few months.

“I respect Carlos Condit, but I want Diaz to win. It will be a weird feeling, sitting at the Mandalay Bay wanting Nick Diaz to win. I want this fight with Diaz so badly, as badly as I wanted the title shot when I got down on my knees. I am not personal friends with [Carlos], but I know him a little and he’s a great person. I know a lot of people who know him well because we train with the same people, but I have only spoken with him a few times. He is a true mixed martial artist. I feel bad, it is weird that I want him to lose, but I have never wanted to fight anyone as much as I want to fight Diaz,” he says. “I have never asked Dana White for anything, but I did ask to fight Nick Diaz. I was [crushed] when I had to pull out of this weekend’s fight hurt, but I am determined to get back to the Octagon as soon as possible to fight this guy. He needs to hold up his part and beat Carlos Condit on Saturday to make this fight happen.I am very nervous that Carlos Condit will win on Saturday night, and that I won’t be able to fight Nick Diaz this summer. Carlos Condit is a very good fighter, he can strike, he is aggressive and he has submissions. He has been very impressive and is the type of fighter who gets better and better the more confident he gets.”

With Diaz, St-Pierre says, he has to expect the unexpected, like a fight in a hotel lobby, which he says he’s prepared for since Nick has been known to start trouble with opponents in the past. He points out that he relishes the opportunity to teach the Stockton native some respect and how to carry himself as a fighter, he’s prepared to

“I don’t truly hate him as a person. I don’t know that he is a bad guy, but I hate what he brings to the sport with the disrespect and the unprofessional things he says and does. It is sort of a professional hatred. He has been nothing but disrespectful and arrogant towards me. During UFC 137 [week] I felt like I had to walk around Las Vegas with my fists ready [to punch Diaz] because every time I came across him he wanted to fight there and then. Every time the elevator opened [in the hotel] I needed to be ready to fight in case he stepped in. I was on edge all week. This guy is crazy. I am used to hearing [smack] talk from opponents, Matt Serra did it, Dan Hardy did it, and Josh Koscheck did it, but with Diaz he has taken it to another level. He and his coach [Cesar Gracie] have called me a coward and tried to disrespect my accomplishments. All that has done though is make me determined to beat him up. He will bring out the best in me, I will be 100 percent focused, like a bomb-expert defusing a time-bomb. When my back is against the wall and I have no choice but to win, when I cannot lose to this person under any cost, that is when I am most dangerous. Also, as champion, I believe Diaz deserves the fight for the title. Style-wise, he is a very tough match for me and the fans deserve to see the fight they really want to see.”

As far as his rehab from recent knee surgery, St-Pierre says he is progressing well, but fell short of giving a projected date for his return.

“I am ahead of schedule. I can already train and even kick but I am remaining calm and not rushing. I won’t train properly until July, it is a matter of discipline not to force my knee to go harder than it can heal. No athlete wants to sit on the sidelines, especially when you are the champion and you must watch two others fight for the interim championship belt,” he says. “I will watch on Saturday and go home very motivated to rehab on Monday morning but I must be disciplined and I must continue to rehab at the pace I am doing.”

A Newly Single Katy Perry Brings You the Fix Friday Link Dump

Team Cesar Gracie surprisingly pleasantly responded to BJ Penn‘s Twitter insult on Nick Diaz with thought-provoking rationale: here. Um… then BJ Penn threatened Cesar Gracie: here. Hermes Franca sentenced to 42 months in jail for.

Team Cesar Gracie ~~surprisingly~~ pleasantly responded to BJ Penn‘s Twitter insult on Nick Diaz with thought-provoking rationale: here.

Um… then BJ Penn threatened Cesar Gracie: here.

Hermes Franca sentenced to 42 months in jail for sexual acts with an underage student: here.

Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Jardine weigh-in video: here.

Strikeforce unsure what to do with Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos who tested positive for steroid use. Dana White says she will be stripped of Womens Featherweight belt: here.

UFC on Fuel 2 in Stockholm, Sweden adds Paulo Thiago vs. Siyar Bahadurzada. Check out how the April 14th card is shaping up, in case you wanna book a ticket to the land of milk and honey: here.

Tito Ortiz makes acting appearance on crime drama, CSI:NY. Watch video: here.

Check out photos [below] of Katy Perry whose divorce was announced this week. Better enjoy these pictures, ’cause you probably have zero chance with her…yep, even though this guy did. Life is unfair.

Diaz’s Camp Fires Back at Penn For Yesterday’s Random Twitter Salvo

(“See, where I come from bitching like that will get you backhanded.”)

Well, it didn’t take long for Team Cesar Gracie to return fire on BJ Penn after “The Prodigy” launched a random Twitter attack on Nick Diaz yesterday.

Here’s what they had to say about Penn’s latest bitchfest via a posting made today on Cesar’s official blog, GracieFighter.com.

Say It Ain’t So BJ…

JANUARY 6, 2012

BJ Penn has apparently not come to terms with the beating he received at the hands of Nick Diaz. Below is his latest posting on his Twitter account:

@nickdiaz209 Look how much bigger you are in this pic..I thought you were gonna scrap from the beginning homie? What was that coward fence holding strategy to tire out the smaller man? Street fighter my ass! I made you fight like glass jaw @jonfitchdotnet poser!
I’ll be ready for that weak bs next time we fight!

At some point it is up to those around you to protect you from yourself. To take you aside and let you know you are wrong and help save you from your folly. Unfortunately for Penn he is surrounded by “Yes Men” that are unwilling to do that. The outcome will be predictable, resulting in a fighter that will never push himself to the fullest and will always have excuses for his losses.

(“See, where I come from bitching like that will get you backhanded.”)

Well, it didn’t take long for Team Cesar Gracie to return fire on BJ Penn after “The Prodigy” launched a random Twitter attack on Nick Diaz yesterday.

Here’s what they had to say about Penn’s latest bitchfest via a posting made today on Cesar’s official blog, GracieFighter.com.

Say It Ain’t So BJ…

JANUARY 6, 2012

BJ Penn has apparently not come to terms with the beating he received at the hands of Nick Diaz. Below is his latest posting on his Twitter account:

Who knew that Team Cesar Gracie would have the more level-headed response?

2012 is turing out to be some Bizarro World, alternate MMA universe. Next you’re going to tell me that Chael Sonnen is going to go full pro wrestler and get his own Piper’s Pit.

Cesar Gracie: B.J. Penn Surrounded by ‘Yes Men’

Filed under: UFC, NewsTrainer Cesar Gracie suggested on Friday that B.J. Penn should direct his anger towards his own camp for his recent troubles instead of Gracie Fighter member Nick Diaz.

“At some point it is up to those around you to protect you f…

Filed under: UFC, News

Trainer Cesar Gracie suggested on Friday that B.J. Penn should direct his anger towards his own camp for his recent troubles instead of Gracie Fighter member Nick Diaz.

“At some point it is up to those around you to protect you from yourself,” Gracie said on his official website. “To take you aside and let you know you are wrong and help save you from your folly. Unfortunately for Penn he is surrounded by ‘Yes Men’ that are unwilling to do that. The outcome will be predictable, resulting in a fighter that will never push himself to the fullest and will always have excuses for his losses.”

Gracie is responding to Penn’s fierce message Thursday towards Diaz on Twitter, questioning Diaz’s approach in their showdown two months ago at UFC 137.

“@nickdiaz209 Look how much bigger you are in this pic,” Penn wrote on Twitter, referring to this post-fight photo.

“You were gonna scrap from the beginning homie? What was that coward fence holding strategy to tire out the smaller man? Street fighter my ass! I made you fight like glassjaw @jonfitchdotnet poser! I’ll be ready for that weak bs next time we fight!”

At UFC 137, Diaz convincingly outpointed Penn through three rounds to eventually earn himself a shot at the UFC welterweight championship.

According to BJPenn.com Editor-in-chief Pedro Carrasco, the Tweet came out of Penn’s frustration with his recent performances. Penn holds one victory in his last five outings.

“… There is a reason why he posted it,” Carrasco said on The Underground Forum. “He is fired up because now that the holidays are over and a lot of his post-fight distractions are behind him, he has nothing to do but think about things and he is not happy with the way he performed in his last several fights.

“I am not here to make excuses for him, but I am pretty sure people, at least with some sense of intelligence, can identify that the B.J. that fought Edgar, Fitch and Diaz was not the same Penn that fought the Diego’s and Florians of the world,” Carrasco continued. “Things changed, but as it sits right now, he is back. That killer mentality and fire is back and it’s been brewing for a while now and today’s tweet is a result of it just boiling over!”

As of now, there is no official word on Penn’s future in MMA. Following the loss to Diaz, Penn hinted towards retirement from MMA competition. Meanwhile, next for Diaz is a UFC interim title bout against Carlos Condit at UFC 143 on Feb. 4.

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Are MMA Managers Talking Too Much?

Gee… It was just recently we learned of Anderson Silva‘s disapproval over his manager, Ed Soares publicly dismissing Chael Sonnen as a deserving title-challenger. Soares said, Silva should be fighting other contenders, since Sonnen has.

Gee… It was just recently we learned of Anderson Silva‘s disapproval over his manager, Ed Soares publicly dismissing Chael Sonnen as a deserving title-challenger. Soares said, Silva should be fighting other contenders, since Sonnen has already tapped on him once and tested positive for steroids. Soares also added Silva only has about 4 fights left in his career. Silva remarked on Soares to Brazilian Televison show, Tela Nitida by saying:

“His position was not good, was not cool, as a manager he needed to have a more professional attitude. He was not professional and I don’t know why… I think it was not cool. But everyone knows what’s best, he is a grown man and he is going to deal with the backlash of what he did.”

Silva then offered a thinly veiled threat to Soares regarding contractual obligations:

“First thing is that nobody can talk for me except myself. Second is that I don’t have a contract with anybody, except with Nine9 and my sponsors, so anything can happen.”

Yet despite the fact that one very high profile top MMA fighter boldly denounced his manager speaking out on his behalf, Cesar Gracie, the longtime manager and coach for Nick Diaz decided to throw some insults toward Georges St. Pierre and call him “little star guy”. Gracie told Sherdog:

“You can’t pull a guy off a card and then bring him back on: ‘Oh, he’s not good enough to fight. We pulled him out of the card. He can’t be in the main event. Yeah, here you go. Oh, wait a minute, guess what happened? Our little star guy over here, his knee hurts. Oh my God, we need Nick Diaz. Let’s put him back in the main event.’ Everybody wants to see that fight. He delivers. Well, little star guy didn’t fight and Nick Diaz did, but they pulled a lot of money from Nick’s purse because it wasn’t structured for him to make as much if it wasn’t GSP, even though he was the main event now and put the people in the seats. Nick Diaz saved that card. OK? That’s what people need to remember when they talk about responsibility, is that he showed up, hamstring injury, knee injury, whatever. He had the same thing. He’s the guy that showed up. He’s the guy that fought his heart out, him and B.J. Penn. They put on a show. They’re two great warriors. They saved the UFC that night.”

But it wasn’t too long ago, when Gracie spoke a different tune out of frustration when Diaz was a no-show to the Las Vegas UFC 137 pre-fight press conference which resulted in Diaz being pulled from the title-fight. Gracie told MMAFighting.com:

There’s a lot of hard workers I see that have trouble putting food on the table for their kids,. I’ve stuck up for Nick a lot, but I can’t stick up for him on this one. I would have driven him to Vegas if it came to that. I don’t care. He just turned his phone off and acted like a little kid. It just doesn’t cut it.”

Hey for that statement, you can’t blame Gracie for speaking out of heartfelt discouragement at the time. Is it okay then for Gracie to do an about-turn by taking all blame off Nick for problems that occurred with the UFC 137 card after-the-fact and call Nick the savior? If your intentions are in the right place, it’s only right to stick up for your guy. But let’s hope as Nick Diaz’s star is rising that Gracie stays grounded.

No fighter needs all the controversy within their own entourage when they only have few years to make their money and their mark. Besides, last I checked Diaz and Silva do pretty well when speaking for themselves, Nick earned himself a title-shot and Anderson pocketed some sweet Twitter cash. So let’s cross our fingers for Gracie’s sake, he doesn’t lose sight of how he was initially disappointed in Nick. Let’s put some faith in him, he isn’t caught smiling with GSP anytime soon [see picture of Soares and Sonnen above]. Let’s believe he’s in a more committed relationship with Diaz than that of Soares and Silva. And then, let’s really get down on our knees and pray for our sake, the managers stick to business behind-the-scenes, and we get to hear more from the fighters.

Source: Fighters Only

Video: Cesar Gracie’s Pretty Sure GSP is a Big Fat Faker

(Video courtesy of YouTube/ProMMANow)

You would think that Nick Diaz’s camp would cool it with all of the accusations about Georges St-Pierre being scared or faking an injury to get out of fighting their boy now that they got the desired result, but that’s not how they do things in Stockton, evidently.

Dring a media scrum after the UFC 137 presser, Cesar Gracie was asked, in a somewhat baited way if he thought GSP’s injury was legit and he didn’t hold back, although he made about as much sense as his protegee.

“He ran past me earlier. I mean, he literally RAN past me, so… Look, he’s a great guy. He’s a black belt under [my cousin] Renzo Gracie. I don’t know the guy that well, personally, but I’m gonna tell you guys something right now… Nick Diaz missed a press conference and he’s here and [he] fought,” Gracie sort of explained. “The guy that went to the press conference didn’t fight. That’s all I gotta say about it. Nick…Yeah, he got kicked out, he’s this…he’s the bad guy… We didn’t go to what Nick called, ‘the beauty pageant,’ but come fight night you guys saw what he’s made of and he showed up and he did everything he had to and the guys that made the press conference, they weren’t here tonight, so you be the judge. You know what I mean?”

No, we don’t know what you mean since it makes no sense. So let us get this straight, somehow GSP faked an injury to get out of fighting Nick, even though he was scheduled to face Carlos Condit when the injury occurred. Wait, what?!

(Video courtesy of YouTube/ProMMANow)

Then Gracie backtracks on saying that the UFC welterweight champ is faking his injury after clearly implying that he is faking his injury.

“I’m not gonna say that. I have no idea. But I’m saying Nick was injured and he still fought. Nick hurt his hamstring. He’s got a knee injury. There’s this, that… I mean these fighters train so hard that they’re gonna get the injuries and everything, but despite his injuries that guy was here for the fans and he’s a warrior just like BJ,” he said. “I think people appreciate that. But one guy [who is supposed to be injured] jumping off the cage, running around, it’s disheartening is all I’m gonna say about it.”

Then Cesar tried to say he was happy that Nick’s opponent was switched to Penn, even though he still seems pissed off about St-Pierre pulling out of the Condit fight for some reason. Maybe he had money on the bout?

Anyway, Cesar didn’t think the punishment fit the crime for Nick no-showing at the presser. Instead he thought that Diaz should have been fined, which likely would have been worse since we’d never hear the end of him complaining that, “people are stealing money out of his pocket that he could have paid to go to college to learn how to buy a house.”

“I was so mad at Nick and Nick’s like family to me and everything and I understood Dana. You guys saw the phone call, whatever, but I don’t think he should have been pulled out of that fight,” Gracie explained. Now in hindsight I’m glad he did. I’m glad he got pulled out because GSP would have puled out no matter what. Let’s face it.”