UFC 143 Diaz vs Condit

In a battle of street fighters versus game planner, Carlos Condit bested Nick Diaz to claim the interim welterweight championship Saturday night at UFC 143.  Using a master strategy created by Greg Jackson,  Carlos Condit ducked, dodged, and leg kicked Diaz to a unanimous 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 victory. 

“He was talking, I was landing punches,” Condit said after and while Nick Diaz is never in a fight where he isn’t talking, Carlos was able to not allow himself to be suckered into the Diaz school yard bully technique.  The plan for Carlos was to keep distance and stay out of exchanges on the cage which, short of a few brief moments, Condit was able to use his defense boxing skills to do just that.

“I pushed this guy backwards the whole time.  He ran from me this whole fight,” Nick Diaz told Joe Rogan after his first loss in twelve outings.  “I landed the harder shots.  He kicked my leg with little baby kicks the whole fight.”  Of course, in MMA, just as in boxing, when a fight goes to the judges, it really does depend on the points a fight scores during the fight so connecting with more than half a hundred leg kicks is going to account for a lot of points.  Point wins like this are a Greg Jackson specialty that is good enough t o even propel a fighter like Keith Jardine to beat the likes of Hall of Famer Chuck Lidddell.

In the co-headline fight of the night, Febricio Werdum used and abused Big Country Roy Nelson in route to an easy decision.  Working a solid inside game and a face to knee plum clinch that threatened to send Nelson’s nose into the first few rows, Werdum went a long way to erasing his lay and invite technique that he utilized against Allistair Overeem in his last outing.  Febricio’s striking will never be on the level of Junior Dos Santos, who’s striking is really, but he did show that his basics are improving and maybe when he gets another shot at one of the big dogs of the division, he can make it on the feet long enough to have a chance to take the fight into his wheelhouse and show the skills that he used to bring down the Last Emperor.  In defeat, Roy Nelson reminded everyone how hard a noggin he has but showed little else to convince anyone that Big Country is anything other than a middle tier fighter.  The Mullet Wonder will continue to have entertaining fights almost every time he steps into the cage but if his dream is still UFC gold, he might want to talk to Chael Sonnen about where he got his belt from.

picture courtesy of  sherdog.com