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….
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.
Rashad Evans knows a thing or two about missed opportunities. Evans, who was originally expected to face UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, has given some advice to former teammate Carlos Condit after it was learned he would be sidelin…
Rashad Evans knows a thing or two about missed opportunities.
Evans, who was originally expected to face UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, has given some advice to former teammate Carlos Condit after it was learned he would be sidelined in favour of Nick Diaz to challenge Georges St-Pierre.
Diaz’s victory over B.J. Penn at UFC 137 was enough to earn him a shot at St-Pierre’s welterweight title, even though Condit was scheduled to face the French-Canadian after Diaz failed to make a couple media appearances to promote the event.
“Suga” told ESPN.com that Condit shouldn’t take his situation personally and he should focus on his next bout, which could potentially lead him to a title shot in the future.
“He was the first to be called [to replace Diaz] so he should know exactly where he is,” Evans said. “So he should be thinking, ‘OK, they thought enough of me to call me in that situation. If I win my next fight then I’ll definitely be in that situation.'”
While many fans believed that Condit provided a better matchup towards the champion, stylistically, the more entertaining opponent was Diaz. And his post-fight comments directed at the champion certainly improved his chances to be rewarded with a title bout, similar to Chael Sonnen’s remarks towards Anderson Silva at UFC 136.
Evans said that the UFC is a business and the company’s job is about putting on the best fights possible, and at this time, the fight that fans are eager to see is Diaz vs. St-Pierre.
“At the time, it made sense for Carlos Condit to step up for the fight, but the reality of the situation was the real fight was Nick Diaz vs. Georges St-Pierre. So he can’t be too upset about that,” Evans said.
Although he won’t receive his title shot as promised, Condit is expected to be featured on the same card as Diaz and St-Pierre, which will likely be scheduled for Super Bowl weekend in February 2012.
BJ Penn has left himself and his fans wondering about his future in the UFC and MMA following his loss to Nick Diaz at UFC 137 this past weekend.Immediately after the bout, Penn told Joe Rogan that it may be the last time we ever see him in the Oc…
BJ Penn has left himself and his fans wondering about his future in the UFC and MMA following his loss to Nick Diaz at UFC 137 this past weekend.
Immediately after the bout, Penn told Joe Rogan that it may be the last time we ever see him in the Octagon, and I was left with my jaw on the floor at the thought.
I don’t believe we have seen the last of “The Prodigy” in the UFC, and while I have always admired Penn’s foray into the welterweight division, I believe he should end his career with a couple of strong fights at 155 pounds.
The world is buzzing about the upcoming championship showdown between Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz.But Carlos Condit is in disbelief, due to the biggest opportunity of his life being taken from him twice in the same month.The former WEC welterweight…
The world is buzzing about the upcoming championship showdown between Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz.
But Carlos Condit is in disbelief, due to the biggest opportunity of his life being taken from him twice in the same month.
The former WEC welterweight champion was originally slated to face St-Pierre for the UFC title at UFC 137, but an injury in training forced St-Pierre to withdraw from the bout.
UFC President Dana White decided to postpone the title and ensured Condit would get his shot at a later date.
With the St-Pierre and Condit bout postponed, the welterweight showdown between Diaz and B.J. Penn was named main event of UFC 137.
Leading up to the fight, there was talk coming out of Diaz’s camp about the former Strikeforce champion surpassing Condit as the No. 1 contender, depending on his performance against Penn.
Still, White assured Condit his spot was safe.
Regardless of the outcome of the Diaz-Penn bout, Condit would still be facing St-Pierre for the world title.
On fight night, Diaz impressed the MMA world, picking Penn to pieces in the second and third rounds and earning a unanimous decision.
At the end of the fight, Diaz grabbed the microphone and issued a challenge both St-Pierre and the UFC could not refuse.
“Where you at Georges? Where you at mother (expletive)?,” yelled Diaz. “I don’t think Georges is hurt, I think he’s scared. I think he’s scared to fight everybody right now.”
According to White, St-Pierre “flipped out” over Diaz’s comments. He pleaded for the bout with Diaz, and it didn’t take long for the UFC to cave.
At the post-fight press conference, White handed Diaz a shot at the UFC title.
“Nick needs motivation. He’s got it. He’s going to fight Georges St-Pierre,” White said. “Carlos Condit has agreed to step aside and get the next guy. [St-Pierre] said, I quote, ‘[Diaz] is the most disrespectful human being I’ve ever met, and I’m going to put the worst beating you’ve ever seen on him in the UFC.'”
Who turns down a UFC title shot?
Not Carlos Condit, according to agent Malki Kawa, who issued a statement to Inside MMA.
“We are obviously disappointed in the UFC’s decision to cancel its commitment with Carlos Condit to give another fighter an opportunity at the welterweight title based on emotional reactions from UFC 137.”
“Contrary to what has been stated, Carlos did not step aside to allow this to happen, and would not just hand over an opportunity for him to achieve his greatest career goal, one that he has earned through strong performances in the Octagon. No option was given to him.”
“For the second time in less than two weeks, Carlos has had an opportunity swept out from beneath his feet. He has shown nothing but pure class in his drive to the title, and will continue to do so.”
Filed under: UFCTimes like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. Eliot Marshall doesn’t kno…
Times like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. Eliot Marshall doesn’t know yet which way things are going to swing following his narrow decision loss to Brandon Vera at UFC 137, but he’s not terribly optimistic.
“I’m pretty sure I’m done, but what can you do?” Marshall said on Tuesday afternoon. “I really genuinely believe that [the UFC is] going to cut me.”
It’s a shame, considering how close he came to not only winning the fight, but finishing Vera in the third round. He came so close, in fact, that Marshall wasn’t the only one who was stunned when the judges failed to give him a 10-8 round in that final frame.
“In my opinion, the worst it could have been was a draw,” said Marshall. “I don’t know what else you’ve got to do [to get a 10-8 round]. I showed good power, knocking him down twice in that round, got a takedown, almost choked him out and I broke his arm.”
All three judges gave Marshall a 10-9 in the final round, just like all three gave Vera a 10-9 in rounds one and two. Despite the near finish and the questionable scoring, it still goes down in the record books as a win for Vera and yet another loss for Marshall, who came into this bout on shaky ground with the UFC.
After getting TKO’d by Luiz Cane at UFC 128 in a fight he took on ten days’ notice just to get back in the UFC, Marshall needed a victory just to stay viable. He may have been a 5-1 underdog coming into the bout, but in the final seconds he had the armbar on so tight that Vera had to choose between defeat and injury. Vera chose the latter, sustaining a torn ligament in his left elbow that landed him on the medical suspensions list, but preserved his decision victory.
“I want to say 99 percent of the people tap in that situation; he didn’t,” Marshall said. “If he tapped, we’d be having a different discussion. You’d be calling me, asking what I’m going to do with the $75,000 bonus for Submission of the Night. He chose to let his arm break. He made a choice for his career that he thought it would be better to go on after his breaking his arm.”
With the loss, Marshall may be out of a job and a career, since he said publicly before the bout that he’d likely retire if released from the UFC for a second time in two years. With that on the line, and with as close as he came to victory, it’s hard for him not to feel as if throughout his time in the Octagon the breaks never seemed to go his way.
“It kind of sums up my career with the UFC, from my first fight for The Ultimate Fighter until now,” he said.
That first fight was his contest against Karn Grigoryan for a spot on TUF’s eighth season. Before being admitted to the house, every fighter had to earn his place with a victory, which meant spending all day cutting weight in a hotel room before the exhibition bout. Marshall asked for a scale in his room so he could check his progress, he said, and he was told one would be delivered.
“A scale never shows up. Never. So I just have to cut the weight, having no clue where I am. I mean, I have a rough estimate of where I’m starting, but a pound matters. You miss [weight], you’re out.”
Marshall weighed in at 197 pounds for that 205-pound bout, he said. He went on to batter Grigoryan in the fight, but lost a split decision that shocked most observers. Ostensibly, his TUF run should have ended there, but Marshall was selected as a replacement for an injured cast member and his career was launched.
“Then I go 3-1 in the UFC and get cut,” he said. “Holy cow. Then I have a fight like that with Brandon and I lose that one too. That’s what I mean. It sums it up.”
Now Marshall is left waiting for news on his future as his management makes his case to the UFC. Lex McMahon, Marshall’s agent, is more optimistic about his future, since the way the Vera fight ended “gave us a lot to work with.”
Marshall, however, seems to be preparing himself for the worst. If the UFC releases him again, he said, he’ll most likely call it quits and do something else with his life.
“You can’t say a hundred percent, but the only way I’m not retired is if I get a big money fight. I won’t fight in regional promotions for $5,000. I’m not doing that. It’s too tough on my family. My kid’s getting to the point where he knows when I’m gone. He knows when I’m not home for a week. So that’s not happening anymore. Unless there’s good money on the table, I’m done.”
But if he is done with MMA after coming so close to a victory, and after what may have been the single best round in his UFC career, how will that sit with him in the years to come? If he ends up retired from fighting at the age of 31 all because one man refused to tap and three judges declined to mark a 10-8 on their scorecards, is that going to be an ending he can live with?
Marshall doesn’t know the answer just yet. For now, he’s waiting. Waiting for bad news, for any news. Waiting to find out which direction his life is going to head in now, and preparing for whatever comes next.
“I proved everything I needed to prove to myself,” Marshall said. “My last fight [against Luiz Cane], ten days’ notice or not, it was bad. I’ll be the first to say that. It was bad in more ways than one. Physically, my mental was off, I kind of fell apart in my mind. But this fight I was prepared, I was ready to go. If that was my last round, that’s my last round. It’s a pretty good last round, right?”
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.
Times like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. 