As early as two days ago Carlos Condit was still the number-one contender for Georges St.Pierre’s UFC welterweight championship. Things changed quickly however, once Nick Diaz was able to win a unanimous decision over B.J. Penn. The change in GSP’s opponent(for the second time) likely had to do with multiple factors, including: how Diaz defeated Penn, the fact that Penn announced his retirement after the fight, and likely mostly due to the fact that Diaz called the champ out and questioned his heart, going as far as to imply that St. Pierre isn’t really injured, but is rather faking the injury to duck him and other challengers(like Condit). Sure one could say that it is purely because GSP demanded that his next fight be against Diaz after being disrespected, but at the end of the day it likely came down to a Diaz/St. Pierre fight being to good to pass up from a marketing stand point.

Condit is really just the innocent bystander adversely affected by this. Condit doesn’t have the same appeal that Diaz does when it comes to fighting GSP, he doesn’t disrespect his opponents, there is no bad blood between Condit or St. Pierre, and you can’t paint the image of the bad guy on Condit without it looking like a cheap fabrication. On the other hand Diaz is all of those things, and the UFC can revel in the fact that they can paint the picture of both a clear cut bad guy and good guy, as well as the fact that Diaz is a very polarizing figure in mma. For hardcore fans like myself it sucks that at least for the time being, we wont be seeing Condit get a title shot that he was technically already given, but in terms of the big picture, Diaz/St. Pierre is the fight that makes the most sense, as it appeals to all mma fans.