Condit’s gonna need to get passed Kampmann before he starts thinking about a title shot but there is still Anthony Johnson, Mike Swick, and a rematch with John Fitch personally I think Fitch was more impressive in his fight with GSP then Kos was.

I never thought Kos was a top fighter at WW to begin with. Maybe hanging around Top 10, but given his performances against GSP and Alves I didn’t believe he was elite.

If Silva beats Leites, Silva could fight again in August – perhaps against Okami. If Silva wins that match and if GSP beats Alves, A. Silva and GSP could fight in December.

Meanwhile, Maia, Marquardt, the winner of Bisping vs. Henderson and others should sort amongst themselves who to fight the MW champ next year.

Fictional Scenario A: GSP Fights Alves in july(or around then), probably does not fight again til the december show for the end of year event. Paulo Thiago in that time fights 3 times, he beats someone like Fitch and perhaps Karo or Stun Gun, maintaining an undefeated record until December he could become a candidate.

Fictional Scenario B: GSP beats Alves Fights Anderson Silva in December and nobody fights for the WW belt until 2010 after Alves.

Fictional Scenario C: GSP Loses to Alves, Alves fights Fitch/Koscheck in December after Fitch/Koscheck string out a couple of wins. Koscheck rematch story is good “Im better blah blah”. Fitch “I have beat him once before I’ll be him again.” Fitch would probably win, Fitch vs GSP Rematch, GSP wins, etc.

I am thinking scenario B is most likely.

I think part of the problem is the “I won`t fight him, cause we`re buddies” Or “I won`t fight him cause we train together”. In WW you have THREE (3) contenders in WW from AKA and in my mind, that`s what messin up the division.

I for one would watch a fight between Kos/Fitch, Fitch/Swick or Kos/Swick. The winner of one of those match-ups is in my opinion an instant contender. I could understand if they don`t wanna fight their brother (Klitschko), but this is starting to get ridiculous.

I think that UFC should have made Swick fight an AKA-guy if he wanted to move to WW.

This article is a bit overstated. I don’t think most fans viewed Kos as being such a threat to GSP. Kos probably did have the best performance against GSP (GSP dominated but didn’t beat the tar out of him a la Fitch and BJ Penn).

Here’s my theory: If Anderson Silva wins in Montreal they will bring GSP into the cage to announce the match up, regardless of the GSP vs. Alves fight. The crowd would go nuts!

This topic is dead on.

However you viewed Koscheck as a top WW contender for the belt, there is a problem for future opponents for GSP (if he beats Alves).

Even before Kos’s UFC 95 bout, I was asking others who the UFC was grooming for the next #1 contender spot after Alves gets his shot in July. It’s a tough spot for the UFC.

They have/had Fitch, Koscheck, Swick, Condit/Kampan, and Hughes/Serra as top contenders. How do they schedule the next fights amongst that group to create the next contender?

Kos just eliminated himself. Swick and Fitch won’t fight each other. What fights would establish, for the UFC and the fans, the next #1 contender?

If anyone wants to take a hypothetical shot at how they’ll match up Fitch and Swick and the Condti/Kampman and Hughes/Serra winners (possibly against guys not on this list like Anthony Johnson or Dan Hardy, etc), I’d love to hear it.

As for the GSP-Anderson possibility, I think that’s not anywhere in the near future with Marquardt’s latest dominating win. GSP won’t go anywhere near 185 while Nate is that close to a title shot.

I view this as a flash KO that could have happened to anyone. I don’t se this as a huge detriment to his career moving forward. He’s still young, he’s still talented and he will be back.

Let’s see who we remember in 10 years, Paulo Thiago or Kos.

Well, I guess that loss means two other things:

(a) Kos will stop pretending he’s Mike Zambidis.

(b) I will never, ever have to hear Rogan idiotically calling Koscheck the 170lb version of Chuck Liddell.

On (b) – c’mon man. Sometimes it really aggravates me that Rogan/Goldie fall in love with one of the fighters and constantly fellate him during the fight and either completely ignore or undermine the other fighter’s effectiveness, while totally over-reacting to everything their current love interest does. They did it in the Sanchez vs. Joe fight too, granted Sanchez clearly won that fight – they were absolutely slobbering all over missed combos by Sanchez and saying zilch when Joe Daddy did something.

but what if gsp does fight silva and wins? (a big if, but possible) then what? he will have beaten the man that has dominated the mw division and like many have suggested above he probably doesn’t want to stand in marquardt’s way to the mw crown and he has already wiped out the ww division. where does gsp go if he beats silva? i think they might put this superfight off for a little while, the last one(gsp/penn) didn’t go so well any way.

Another point..

Paulo Thiago is a tough tough dude. some of those shots he took from Kos would have put most in that division on their ass.

That KO he caught him with was shokcing in that he looked like crap on his feet.

The UFC could possibly make the argument since Condit was the champ at 170 in the WEC he should have the chance at the UFC title, since they kind of took away his.

I love the fact that the UFC WW division is wide open, GSP needs new challangers and now things are wide open for guys like Kampman, Condit, and Swick to be a couple of wins away from a title shot.

The best thing to happen would be for Anderson to go to LHW and GSP got to MW. That would blow everything open, and let things develop for the previous champs to come back to etc.