With the furor surrounding Nick Diaz’s no-shows at several press junkets, is there more to it than meets the eye?
Could this be a carefully and meticulously orchestrated plan by the UFC or is it just what it was; Diaz no-showing for the reasons he’d stated earlier in the week?
Let’s take a closer look:
Remember Nate Marquardt? Well he was fired from the UFC for failing to get the medical clearance required for his fight with Rick Story at UFC on Versus 4. Diaz, on the other hand, is still in a job and is set to throw down with BJ Penn in the co-main event at UFC 137.
Marquardt’s actions were no different to Diaz’s; they both put their respective events in jeopardy, Marquardt gets sacked and Diaz gets a public slap on the wrist. Enough said.
Another thing to bear in mind, with a fight on the scale of that magnitude, why was it so hard for anyone to locate the whereabouts of Diaz?
When contact was finally made, White spoke about how Diaz had voiced his concerns about the main event; he couldn’t handle the pressure. I’d have thought that White would’ve known about Diaz and his extreme aversion to the media before signing him up for that fight?
Next, how come Cesar Gracie had no inkling of where his star pupil was holed up, especially with a fight in the offing that could’ve propelled Diaz to the heights of MMA greatness?
Also one minute Gracie was in total agreement with White’s decision to axe Diaz from the main event, and the next he was stating that the fight should’ve gone ahead. Make your mind up son.
And then there is St-Pierre, what part if any did he have to play in this supposed cloak and dagger affair? At the UFC 137 press conference, after hearing that Diaz had been pulled from the main event and that he’d now be fighting Carlos Condit, St-Pierre had this to say:
“I do believe Carlos Condit is more dangerous than Nick Diaz,” he said. “If they fought, I would put my money on Carlos Condit, so for me it’s a bigger challenge.”
I like the phrase: Bigger challenge, an apt way of trying to convince the fans that the Condit fight bears more significance than a Diaz fight would.
And finally we have the 209 son himself; suddenly Diaz comes out of the woodwork apprising the media of his reasons for failing to attend both press junkets while throwing a few derogatory comments and expletives St-Pierre’s way. Was this Diaz trying to hard sell a future St-Pierre vs. Diaz fight?
Now if it is/was a strategy contrived by the Zuffa hierarchy and Dana White in particular, and if it does go according to plan, it could well turn out to be a masterstroke by said persons.
For it to be an ingenious scheme St-Pierre would have to defeat Condit, and Diaz would have to be victorious against Penn. But as with anything in life, nothing is certain.
This could easily be upended in several ways; Condit and Penn both win their respective matches which means Penn fights for the championship. Or you could have St-Pierre vs. Penn or Condit vs. Diaz fighting for the championship.
There’s nothing wrong business-wise with the aforementioned match-ups; I’m sure the buy rates will suffice to assuage the UFC, but with a St-Pierre vs. Diaz fight, the UFC would’ve had much more to gain from a financial point of view.
And at this point in time, with the match-ups already in place for UFC 137, the Zuffa based company is sitting in a very comfortable position. The financial icing on the cake would be if this conjectural plan came to fruition. Now that would be a stroke of genius.
Maybe Diaz was playing the game all along, the same game that White has been so vociferous to point out in the past.
Remember this is all speculative and hypothetical.
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