By Mike Russell
If you didn’t know any better, you would assume by looking at the odds for Saturday night’s UFC 143 main event interim welterweight title fight between Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit that betting on Diaz would earn you some easy money.
Fortunately this isn’t pro-wrestling and bout outcomes aren’t pre-determined, because Condit hasn’t followed the scripts written for him by the bookies for most of his fights and he doesn’t plan on starting at this point of his career.
“I’m probably the underdog as far as the betting lines go, but that’s where I’ve been my whole career,” he explains with a shrug. “I’m excited for this fight. I know I have all of the tools to come out on top. I’m motivated and am in shape. I’ve been training since July for this fight. I had some cancellations and some change-ups, but I stayed focus on making sure I’m ready.”
Spending the better part of seven months in the gym has ensured that Carlos remained focused and didn’t become complacent in training, even through the holidays. Although he says that he didn’t have an issue sticking to his diet and keeping his nose through the grindstone through December, he worried at the time that he would be the only one in the gym.
“It wasn’t so much about me staying motivated. It’s that a lot of the guys at the gym were back home,” he explains. “We have a lot of guys at Jackson’s who come in from other places and they went home for Christmas, so my main concern was having enough training partners for the holidays, but I did. They came through for me and so did my coaches and I’m so grateful to them for that.”
In spite of having to make some sacrifices, Condit made sure to make the time for his family the past few months. The former WEC welterweight champ explains that now that he has a son, his outlook on fighting has changed.
“[Having a baby] is a huge motivating factor. I take [fighting and training] a lot more seriously now and I realize how fortunate I am to be able to fight for a living and to be able to make a good living doing what I love,” Condit says earnestly. “I also am able to spend a lot of time with my son, which I probably wouldn’t be able to do if I was punching a clock, working a nine to five.”
Although he says he isn’t looking past Diaz as far as his fighting career goes, “The Natural Born Killer” points out that he is making moves to ensure that he has alternate forms of income when he walks out of the cage for the last time.
“I worked a bit on a movie they filmed out in Albuquerque. Other than that I have a couple business ventures I’m working on,” he says. “I’m a partner in a small clothing store and I have a few other lines in the water. I plan on leveraging my success as a fighter to continue to be successful when I’m done fighting.”
Current fighters take note.