Granted, this is premature, but could we be in for another Jones & Evans scenario?

With Condit winning on the weekend the intention would be for him to fight GSP at some stage to determine the true welterweight champion.

My memory isn't what it used to be, but aren't they both fighting out of Greg Jackson's camp? Could there be an issue with these two Jackson fighters fighting each other?

Or is the MMA world past that now, sick of hearing about the Jones/Evans situation, and everyone is a professional?

Thoughts please.

A methodical display from Carlos Condit was enough to rain on Nick Diaz's parade, on Saturday night.

Las Vegas's Mandalay Bay Events Center played host to a 'UFC 143' card that also featured key victories for Fabricio Werdum, over Roy Nelson, and Renan Barao, over Scott Jorgensen.

In the main event, the two top-ranked contenders to, the currently injured, Georges St. Pierre's Welterweight World Championship, came head-to-head.

In a five-round contest, for the interim gold, a composed Carlos Condit shocked the MMA world. The controversial Nick Diaz, the consensus favourite, was made to look much less dangerous than in previous fights. The dirty boxing specialist was reduced to launching brief, albeit highly-effective, salvos. Condit's natural range and intelligent movement frustrated Diaz throughout.

Diaz found himself unable to corner the mobile Condit, as the Muay Thai practitioner executed a high volume of leg kicks, often off the back foot. In coupling his rangy defense with some creative offensive combinations, including urakens and headkicks, Condit did enough to convince the judges of his value, on the night.

Although, in an expletive-laden post-match interview, Diaz identified his trademark forward movement as the strongest argument for himself as the winner, Condit, in truth, had many of the Diaz hallmarks well scouted. Even the mindgames of the unpredictable Cesar Gracie trainee failed to impact upon the focused Condit. At times Diaz attempted to showboat – posing and, at one point, even slapping his opponent. However, these superfluous gestures came in lieu of any kind of sustained, scoring offense from the former Strikeforce and WEC champ.

Diaz's strongest sequence of the night occured in an exciting sprint finish. As the contest came to a close, he scored a takedown on a tiring Condit, before beginning to trouble the New Mexican with chokehold and armbar attempts. Disappointingly, from Diaz's perspective, Condit was able to weather the late storm to guide his ship home.

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Shungo Oyama finishing Hae Suk Son in the final of the Middleweight Grand Prix. Courtesy of Manabu Takashima.

Shungo Oyama continued his recent renaissance by defeating two opponents in one night to claim the Road FC Middleweight Grand Prix title. He has now won five straight fights and improves to 13-13, leaving him one win short of having a positive record for the first time since 2001.

The quarter finals took place at Road FC 5 in December with Oyama defeating Denis Kang in the most notable of the four matchups. The Japanese fighter's reward for that performance was a semi final with Jong Dae Kim, which he won with a first round heel hook, while Hae Suk Son stopped Eun Soo Lee with strikes early on in their fight.

It took Oyama just over two minutes to take Son down and finish him with punches for a victory which few would begrudge him given the calibre of opposition he consistently faced early on in his career. The Japanese middleweight has been in there with Wanderlei Silva, Mirko Crocop, Dan Henderson, Renzo Gracie, Melvin Manhoef and Carlos Newton.

As the middleweight Grand Prix reached its conclusion a 135 lbs tournament got underway with Andrew Leone taking on Kyung Ho Kang, the number one Korean fighter at the weight. The American had announced his intention to compete at flyweight in future but has agreed to continue to compete in the division at least for the duration of this tournament after being put forward by ONE Fighting Championship to provide an international presence.

Perhaps with this information in mind Kang, who had an 9-5 record going into this fight, decided to attempt an ambitious weight cut in order maximize his size advantage, The plan backfired when he missed weight by 5 lbs and even though reports suggest he rehydrated back up to over 155 lbs he was hit with a point per round penalty meaning that he effectively had to secure a stoppage if he wanted to win.

Leone was on the receiving end of some solid knees to the head while on the ground in the opening round and also survived an armbar attempt, but was never dominated to the extent that Kang could recover his three point deficit and progressed to the semi finals courtesy of a decision win.

There were three other fights in the bantamweight tournament. It is is unclear whether they were quarter finals or just qualifiers but the winners were Jae Hoon Moon, Dae Hwan Kim and Jae Hyun So.

Full results:

Jae Hoon Moon defeated Jin Suk Jung via TKO
Dae Hwan Kim defeated Kwang Su Park via decision
Jae Hyun So defeated Myung Sik Kwak via decision
Hyung Seok Lee defeated Chung Il Jeo via submission (Guillotine Choke)
Seok Mo Kim defeated Jung Min Kang via TKO
Eun Soo Kim defeated Sang Soo Lee via KO
Hae Suk Son defeated Eun Soo Lee via TKO advances to 185 lbs Tournament Final
Shungo Oyama defeated Jong Dae Kim vis submission (Heel Hook)
Jae Young Kim defeated Hee Seung Kim via submission (North-South Choke)
Andrew Leone defeated Kyung Ho Kang via decision advances to 135 lbs Tournament Semi Final
Lee Moon Han defeated Jung Won Lee via decision
Shungo Oyama defeated Hae Suk Son via TKO wins 185 lbs Tournament

After some of the reaction concerning the Diaz-Condit fight, it just got me wondering, why do people watch MMA for striking? I'm not gonna lie, in terms of MMA i'm still abit of a noob at the moment, ive watched much more boxing, but when i watch MMA i don't get overly excited by the striking, and ofcourse, why would they box as well as actual boxers. What gets me more excited is the submissions and the use of TDs and transitions, it's something different from MMA

I know that MMA is Mixed Martial Arts so striking is a big big part of it but for some reason ive got it tuned that the TDs, grappling and all the rest of it is more 'MMA' than boxing is. I also understand that the striking can be exciting for some people, (like i said, it excites me but not OVERLY, simply because if i want masterful striking, or slugging, or people just throwing punches for a whole night, i can just watch boxing for that

This whole post is gonna sound silly to alot of people, but maybe we can discuss...

PS - My take on the Condit fight was that he did well, executing a good gameplan, to be honest, i saw IKilled007's post and he didn't seem too happy with the manner of the fight, i see where he's coming from ofcourse but at the same time it's easy for us lol, were watching the fight, for Condit, any form of trading couldve been disastrous, and at the end of the day, him losing wouldnt affect us in any way, so ofcourse we can moan but he's actually in the situation, if that makes sense

First off, I'm glad the UFC has finally put official in-fight statistics on their duly improved score-graphic. It's got a boxing-esque feel to it and presumably they're using FightMetric for their numbers and not CompuStrike, which probably had Matt Riddle landing 459 strikes.

Unfortunately, this very helpful new feature of the UFC's revamped broadcast production has now become Mike Goldberg's only source of play-by-play. I lost count of the number of times he would blatantly ignore the action right in front of him to spout off completely uninteresting stats from a fight. So now this is the rough shortlist of things Goldie will mention in every commentary:

- Statistics passed along to him during a fight of any sort (e.g Werdum has landed 80% of his significant strikes).

- Anyone associated with a Karate background or even a Karate stance is automatically another version of Lyoto Machida. Stephen Thompson is an American Machida, don't you know?

- If you just as much land multiple knees in the Muay Thai clinch, it's reminiscent of Anderson Silva.

- If you're small and throw a lot of kicks, you're Jose Aldo. Renan Barao is like a 135 Jose Aldo....until you realize Barao hasn't recorded a KO in forever and has slick offensive submission skills.

- Personal stories of fighters that he's determined to finish reading as Joe Rogan screams all over the actual action going in the cage.

- Any spectacular knockout will be met with "OH MY GOODNESS! HOW GOOD WAS THAT?!"

- Teep!

- Turk!

- Boom!

- It is all over!

- Mediocre fighters like Matt Brown or Matt Riddle are never in a boring fight.

- Every terrible striker like Dean Lister, Jake Shields, Karlos Vemola, or Matt Riddle is described as "ever-improving".

- In pre-fight talk, every loss is simply described as a "hard fought battle".

- Nut shots: "So you wanna be an Ultimate Fighter?" to serve as a reminder that if you want to be an "Ultimate Fighter", you will get kicked in the balls occasionally.

Have I missed anything? Try turning my list into a drinking game. You'd be dead within seconds.

Diaz/Condit was hyped as a sure-fire fight of the year candidate. Fans were teased by a giddy Joe Rogan at the end of the FX prelims for the oncoming onslaught of carnage, blood, and violence that was sure to rain down upon the live crowd at the main event later in the night. We were urged to buy the card if we considered ourselves "true MMA fans", because two fighters "in their prime" and "at an elite level" rarely meet, let alone two supposed "killers". Yes, I'm air-quoting. No, I'm not upset. I watched it at a local bar because I could smell the hypetrain's familiar post-card failure fresh in my nostrils.

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So, it turns out weed, cognac and going to bed after 8am isn't the best cure for a cold. Thankfully I was able to wake up to some spreadsheeting and 16 fanposts about how the Condit - Diaz fight was the worst disappointment since Duke Nukem Forever.

A couple of thoughts before I dive into the results: that was a pretty high scoring event. A prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay, pretty high scoring, in fact. UFC 136 had an average score of 64.2 but UFC 143's average score blew it away and came in at a RIDICULOUS 69.4 points. That's the third time in five events that the BECW camp has scored 60+ points on average. Either this year's competitors are better or MMA picking got easier, because UFC 136 was the only event last season that featured a 60+ point average.

Despite the plethora of high scores, John Danaher's Hair's BECW record of 105 points for an event (UFC 136) still stands. However, Noahwob and benten20's scores of 103 mean that JDH is no longer the only CW player to score 100+ points. Well done, guys!

The median score for the event was 72 points but the average was dragged down by a couple of poor scores and quite a few incomplete sets of picks (0's aren't counted in the average). Those of you who posted incomplete picks - shame on you. You are a disgrace to the Civil War.

Every fight on the UFC 143 card featured a clear favourite and at least a 2-to-1 underdog, at least based on the BECW camp picks. Roy Nelson was the most popular underdog being picked by 36% of the camp (Caceres was second with 32%) while on the other end of the spectrum Max Holloway got 0 picks, Starks got 4, C-Murder got 6 and Martinez got 11. If Pierce, Martinez and Caceres had won their fights as they probably deserved the scores would have looked very different indeed.

Alright, without further ado, here's this week's table of contents. Follow the jump for stats & graphs.

Table of Contents

• 1a. Individual scores, UFC 143
• 1b. Individual scores, overall
• 2a. Team scores after UFC 143
• 2b. Overall team scores
• 3. More to come

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Diaz vs Condit is over and I've had a whole night to think about it and let the anger subside

What pisses me off the most about the fight last night was one the marketing and two, the missed opportunity for greatness. Touching on the first issue I had 4 new comers at my house and did my best to try to sell this fight as a potential fight of the decade. I took it upon myself to show Diaz and Condit's greatest hits. I spent days of last week online and using various other types of media to make this match shine. The marketing from the UFC showed two guys that were going to go out there and bleed for your money if you bought the pay per view. The lead in to this fight for me and my newbies was perfect.

Then the fight happened. Everyone take a minute and try to visualize this. You have a room with 3 regular UFC fans and 4 people watching a UFC for the first time. The regulars are stunned by the decision (all of us thought Diaz won) and the new people are sitting there confused, not really knowing what happened. The regulars started to get pissed, and the newbies started to get sad. That's the situation i was faced with last night my friends.

The second issue is one that really irks me. Diaz vs Condit should have been a fight for the ages. This could have been up there with Henderson vs Shogun and Garcia vs Chan Sung Jung. Two guys that, in the heat of the moment put it all on the line to give the world a fight that would be etched in the history of MMA forever. Everything was there, on paper.

Diaz was ready to take this opportunity, Condit was not. That is sad my friends. What could have been. This fight could have been great, this fight could have been one that we could have been telling our grandchildren about. It was not to be.

Lastly, I could care less about Condit vs GSP. Boring game plan A vs boring game plan B. I'm not gonna pay my hard earned money for that. I, like many others might catch it on fuel around christmas time and will try my hardest to stay awake till the end.

Go Giants!!!!

Was Nick Diaz a victim of poor judging, or did he really just get beat? According to Nick, he is nothing but a victim of poor judging, and a judging system that rewards the wrong guy. My home scorecard had Carlos Condit winning 48-47 at least. The last 3 rounds he was going forward, but he was behind in the effective striking department. The first 2 rounds i gave to Nick, with the second round being very close and really could have went either way, but Diaz was going forward so i gave it to him. I just couldn't give him any of the last 3 rounds just for being the 1 going forward because he was not the 1 landing the more telling blows.

If Nick Diaz was just emoitional when he said" he is done with this mma s...t" he really should retire. Saying he gets paid way to much, is a slap in the face to those who pay to watch him fight. The more they pay thier fighters, the more they have to charge for tickets to watch fights. I think he is just blowing smoke out his ass. He is a bully, who couldn't have his way with Carlos, and got frustrated and emotional and said some irrational things. Nick is an awesome fighter, and i would love to see him fight in person for sure. I really hope he comes to fight some more ( a fight with Koscheck) would be way cool. What do you think Nick should do, and what do you think he will do?

Hahaha, Guess what Gspmademegay found? That's right bitches...Rec Away!!!

So I was visiting my inlaws in california this week and decided to spend some time in LA for the new years. I bought some 150$ tickets that allowed me to club hop and had open bar at a few clubs throughout the city to allow me to have a good time.

I started at the Geisha house and then went to the egyptian place that had an open bar. After a couple of drinks I winded up being at the ECCO club. After argueing with the bouncers for about 20 minutes they finally let us in because we had VIP passes that we had paid for.

Some random coked out kid was like Rampage Jackson is in front of the restraunt in a bottle service area. So, I immediatly checked it out.

I went straight to the area pointed out and found Jackson. He was drinking grey goose and surrounded by japanese chicks. I bugged the bouncers around himn for like 30 min to ask if he would let me up or come down to shake my hand for a picture and he said no. He even wouldn't let me even shake his hand, with no pics. BUT, what he did do was......

My wife is kind of an MMA fan the same way that I am a Kardashian fan. She watches what I watch and I'll watch what she watches. Jackson was surrounded by obvious hoe's. My wife asked to see Jackson and was denied by the bouncers. Then Jackson pointed her out and had her come into her booth.

I was extactic. Jackson was finally going to let me in the VIP booth! My wife danced with him and once he found out she wasn't putting out (I guess)

He kicked my wife out and squashed any hope of that happening for me. He even flipped me off, which I took a picture of and smiled at him the whole time. He looked like he was joking, but seriously its hard to tell. Beer balls would have had me slap him because I know he fights around my weight but he was around a bunch of guards and he would have kicked my ass anyways, but I may have gotten my point across anyways. But, that was not an option. I kept bugging the staff and the bouncers were really cool to me and kept trying to make a point to bring me up to meet him. Even they wanted me to meet him. They turned away people that were doing the same thing as me. I was very coridal about everything. I even talked to his Wolf's Lairs trainers about recent fights and they were really cool guys.

I EVEN BOUGHT HIM A SHOT OF GREAY GOOSE, which was like 20$, (dont drink at ECCO its crazy expensive). Which he was drinking at the VIP booth and his girls took it and I saw him drink it. Nope nothing.

I tried it all. "I'm not your average mma fan" "I've followed Jackson since PRIDE" I pulled all the stops....... and then.

He invited my wife up again, she pointed to me, and he immediatly kicked her off the stage and flipped me off again.

I am on record saying I will never again route for Jackson again, and I am glad that Jones fucken owned the guy. Made him his bitch you could say. My shot, was told that it would not be given to him, because he was training to fight Ryan Bader and he couldnt drink. I not only saw him drink my shot, but he polished off his bottle of bottle service vodka.

The guy just wants to get his dick wet and doesnt give a shit about his fans. He was into my wife like you read about and could have cared less about me, the real fan. Fuck sake the guy flipped me off for like 10 minutes while I just smiled and took pictures of him. I understand, some guys were rushing the stage, but the bouncers took care of them quick and never even got to him. I actually got to talk to him and he was a total dick to me on none threatening grounds. I never rushed his place or even yelled "thats Rampage!". I was just like that's Jackson can I get a picture with him. They said no and then my wife was called up and the guy just shit on me the whole time.

WHAT A TOTAL DICK.

His antics on tape, are the real Jackson.

So dont doubt Jones so much, that guy probably genuine in person and real.

What a fucken let down.

Mike.
FUCK YOU QUINTON JACKSON!!!!!!!!