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Does Nick Diaz Deserve a Title Shot Over Condit?

Calling out Georges St-Pierre might of been the smartest move Nick Diaz has made in his mixed martial arts career. Fans watched Diaz pull off an impressive victory over BJ Penn at UFC 137, and shortly after, he accused the UFC welterweight champio…

Calling out Georges St-Pierre might of been the smartest move Nick Diaz has made in his mixed martial arts career.

Fans watched Diaz pull off an impressive victory over BJ Penn at UFC 137, and shortly after, he accused the UFC welterweight champion of faking his injury to pull of their original bout. Diaz’s comments instantly brought the crowd into a frenzy as they chanted for the Canadian star.

The UFC immediately found their new villain to market in Diaz, and set up a potential title bout between the former Strikeforce welterweight champion and St-Pierre.

Ultimately, it turns out the title shot promised to Carlos Condit was never meant to be, at least for now. UFC President Dana White announced that Diaz would be favoured over Condit to face the champion, and from a business perspective, he rightfully should be.

Although Condit is more of a legitimate threat to St-Pierre’s title reign than Diaz, the Stockton native possesses the skills and personality to make it a more lucrative bout.

Diaz might not be as versatile Condit, but he certainly has the boxing skills and aggression to force the champion into a back-and forth battle that fans haven’t seen out of St-Pierre in quite some time.

Not to mention, St-Pierre was so infuriated with Diaz’s remarks that he personally asked White to schedule a title bout between them. Therefore, it’s fair to assume that he will be holding a personal grudge against his opponent.

The magnitude of this title bout has excited fans and it has become one of the most anticipated fights in recent memory.

Alas, Condit was sidetracked on his route to a title shot and Diaz just happened to sell himself better to make the audience invest more attention and interest in him. Part of what sells fights is a fighter’s personality, and unfortunately, Condit does not have the personality that fans want to see.

Diaz represents a different kind of a fighter, one who carries certain traits that an average fan can either loathe or relate to. And while some fans may not agree with White’s choosing of Diaz over Condit, it is the right decision.

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UFC 137 and Beyond: Ranking Georges St. Pierre’s Most Dangerous Contenders

At UFC 137, BJ Penn and Nick Diaz faced off in a battle of elite welterweights. In one of the most exciting fights in recent memory, Diaz came back from losing the first round by giving Penn the beating of his life en route to a decision victory….

Diaz will be getting the next title shot, reclaiming the shot he lost when he was demoted to co-main event for missing some pre-fight press conferences.

Condit is probably next in line after Georges St. Pierre.

Fitch and Ellenberger are also very close to a title shot. A little further, but not too far off, are Anthony Johnson and Rory MacDonald.

The division is stacked with talent, and GSP will be busy for a while.

I’ve decided to rank GSP’s most threatening potential future challengers, how those challengers would beat him and vice versa.

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MMA Top 10 Welterweights: Nick Diaz Belongs at No. 2

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, WelterweightsNick Diaz is the top contender for Georges St. Pierre’s UFC welterweight title, and he deserves to be.

The reason the UFC decided to reverse course and book Diaz vs. GSP is that it has all the makings of a pay-…

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, Welterweights

Nick Diaz is the top contender for Georges St. Pierre‘s UFC welterweight title, and he deserves to be.

The reason the UFC decided to reverse course and book Diaz vs. GSP is that it has all the makings of a pay-per-view blockbuster. But it was also the right decision from a competitive standpoint: After Diaz’s UFC 137 victory over B.J. Penn, he’s demonstrated that he deserves to be considered the No. 2 fighter in mixed martial arts at 170 pounds.

So as we rank the Top 10 welterweights in MMA, GSP stays on top with Diaz on his heels. Find out how we rate the rest of the division below.

Top 10 welterweights in MMA
(Editor’s note: The individual fighter’s ranking the last time we did welterweights is in parentheses.)

1. Georges St. Pierre (1): St. Pierre has really never been threatened since losing to Matt Serra in April of 2007; his current nine-fight winning streak consists of six unanimous decisions, two TKOs and one submission win without ever being in any trouble. I don’t think St. Pierre is going to lose to Diaz, but I do think Diaz has the right style, both with his high-volume punching and his ability to submit people off his back, to challenge St. Pierre in a way he hasn’t been challenged before.

2. Nick Diaz (4): As Diaz won 10 fights in a row over the last three years, a lot of skeptics raised questions about whether the guys he was beating were really all that good. No one can ask that about his 11th straight win: Penn is universally regarded as a Top 10 welterweight, and Diaz gave him a thorough pounding. Jon Fitch, who’s No. 2 in most welterweight rankings, wasn’t as successful against Penn as Diaz was. Diaz can compete with the elite, and he’s earned his opportunity to fight the best of the best in St. Pierre.

3. Jon Fitch (2): After 11 months off following his draw with Penn, Fitch is slated to return against Johny Hendricks at UFC 141 on December 30. That’s a fight that won’t do much for Fitch in the welterweight division, but it should be a good opportunity for him to grab another unanimous decision victory.

4. Josh Koscheck (5): Koscheck looked great in his first-round knockout of Matt Hughes in September. Koscheck isn’t ever going to beat St. Pierre, but it was good to see that Koscheck has recovered and is ready to resume his role as one of the welterweight division’s elite fighters.

5. Carlos Condit (7): Condit has looked great on his current four-fight winning streak, but I see no reason he’s more deserving of a title shot than Diaz. I’d like to see Condit win another fight against another Top 10 opponent before he becomes the top welterweight contender.

6. Jake Ellenberger (NR): Ellenberger enters the Top 10 on the strength of his 53-second knockout of Jake Shields. I’d love to see him rematch Condit, whom he lost to by split decision in 2009.

7. Rory MacDonald (9): The 22-year-old MacDonald is 12-1, with the only loss coming to Condit. There’s little doubt that he’ll be fighting for the UFC welterweight title some day, although he’s in no rush to do that. He gets Brian Ebersole next at UFC 140.

8. B.J. Penn (6): Penn is 1-3-1 in his last five fights, but there’s no shame in losing to Frankie Edgar and Nick Diaz, or drawing with Jon Fitch. No matter how discouraged he was after losing to Diaz, Penn shouldn’t retire. He has a lot of big fights ahead of him.

9. Jake Shields (3): Shields is now on a two-fight losing streak after being decisioned by GSP and knocked out by Ellenberger. But look for him to bounce back in 2012. He has too much talent not to.

10. John Hathaway (10): A tough decision at No. 10, but I’ll stick with Hathaway for now. An injury forced Hathaway to drop out of UFC 138, but he’s a very promising 24-year-old with a 15-1 record.

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UFC 142: Anthony Johnson and 7 UFC Fighters Who Should Move Up a Weight Class

Perhaps the insane weight-cutting has finally gotten to Anthony “Rumble” Johnson. We learned today that the world’s largest welterweight will be taking a step that few fighters do in today’s MMA by actually moving up in weight t…

Johnson, who recently knocked out Charlie Brenneman on Oct. 1, is well-known for making one of the most dramatic weight-cuts in the sport as he starts as high as 225-pounds, leaving him with a 55-pound drop down to the 170-pound welterweight division.

Some have questioned the health aspects of making this kind of dramatic weight-cut prior to competing in such an intense sport, something which he and his camp have addressed in the past.

Now it appears that they have made the decision that their fighter would be better suited to compete at 185, where he will still be one of the largest athletes in the division.

There are quite a few other fighters who have moved down in weight classes in the past in order to take advantage of their larger physiques, but Johnson is going in the opposite direction. He shouldn’t be alone, either. In fact, there are quite a few MMA fighters right now who should seriously consider a move up in weight classes.

In this slideshow, we’ll take a look at seven current fighters who should join Anthony Johnson in moving up a weight class.

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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

Diaz on GSP: ‘I Don’t Have Anything Against St-Pierre’

Despite his comments directed at Georges St-Pierre following his win over BJ Penn at UFC 137, Nick Diaz has no hard feelings towards the UFC welterweight champion. Diaz called out St-Pierre immediately after his victory, accusing the champion of f…

Despite his comments directed at Georges St-Pierre following his win over BJ Penn at UFC 137, Nick Diaz has no hard feelings towards the UFC welterweight champion.

Diaz called out St-Pierre immediately after his victory, accusing the champion of faking his injury in order to avoid facing Diaz in the main event. Shortly after, St-Pierre reportedly asked UFC President Dana White for a matchup with Diaz on Super Bowl weekend in February next year.

However, Diaz retracted his earlier statement regarding St-Pierre and said he doesn’t hold animosity towards him. In fact, he sees the French-Canadian as a role model in the sport.

“I don’t have anything against Georges St-Pierre, I think he’s a great fighter. I think he’s a nice guy just like everybody else,” Diaz told Fightline.com. “He’s a great role model.”

The former Strikeforce welterweight champion’s post-fight comments really offended St-Pierre—but Diaz said it was the only way he could of earned his title bout with the champion. Although he put on an impressive performance, Diaz was simply not happy with himself.

During the post-fight press conference, Diaz became frustrated with the way he has been mistreated by the UFC. He blames the lack of guidance from his own camp as a result of the misrepresentation of his image.

Obviously, Diaz hopes to achieve the success and the top position that St-Pierre currently and rightfully holds.

“I would love to be that too, if I was in that position. I just, unfortunately, have never had that opportunity or the right people behind me to push me to be that type of fighter or that type of role model or what you’d like to see,” he said.

However, Diaz’s current anti-hero image has brought nothing but success for the 28-year-old and it will certainly bring him more attention and appeal as his potential title bout with the champion draws closer.

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