UFC 143 Preview – Nick Diaz vs Carlos Condit

It’s been almost 11 years since Nick Diaz made his professional mixed martial arts debut. He had some bad moments early on with losses to Parisyan, Sanchez, Riggs and Sherk but would go on to be one of the top mixed martial artists in the world. With each fight, his unique style of boxing gets better and better.

His last loss was back in 2007 in Corpus Christi, it was by doctors stoppage and it was against newcomer KJ Noons. Since that loss he would go on a three fight win streak before fighting “The Legend” Frank Shamrock. It was a brutal fight, Diaz would finally finish Shamrock by hitting a right hook to the body and pounding away at him against the cage. He then went on to nail Scott Smith with hundreds and hundres of punches in one of the most entertaining one sided fights of the last decade.

To crown the first ever Strikeforce welterweight champion, they brought in the (at the time) top ten ranked Marius Zaromskis to fight Nick Diaz. Zaromski’s was fresh off of winning the DREAM Grand Prix tournament then. It was an awesome fight that was concluded with a right hook to finish off Zaromskis. Diaz made quick work of Hayato Sakurai before avenging his loss to KJ Noons in a five round decision. He then had a great fight with Evangelista Santos. He was eating legkicks early but he still took the first round after coming really close to finishing Santos against the cage. Second round was close but Diaz finished him via armbar.

Diaz then had the round of the year against Paul Daley, a round in which Diaz was dropped twice. But Diaz persevered and beat Daley via TKO just seconds before the first round ended. He finally made his return to the UFC, where he broke FightMetric records in his thrashing of BJ Penn (Nate Diaz would then break those records against Donald Cerrone).

Condit’s first famous run was in his WEC days. He beat the tough John Alession to win the vacant WEC crown. He tapped out Brock Larson via armbar in his first title defense. People today might not realized but Larson was one of the toughest guys around in those days. He beat Carlo Prater and then had a war with Hiromitsu Miura. The Condit-Miura fight remains one of the great WEC fights of all time.

He made his UFC debut against Martin Kampmann, an exciting and awesome fight that went to Martin Kampmann via decision. He then had a fight with Jake Ellenberger that Condit won via decision but it could have easily gone to Ellenberger or it could have been a draw (if the first round was scored 10-8).

Condit had some early trouble with Rory MacDonald but came back strong in the third to win via TKO stoppage in the final minute. He then stopped Dan Hardy with a nasty hook in one of his most well known highlights. Condit’s latest fight was against Dong Hyun Kim, and he hit a beautiful flying knee and a few extra punches to finish him off.

On the ground, Diaz is the better submission grappler. On the feet, after seeing what Diaz has done to BJ Penn and Paul Daley in his last fights, I have to favor Diaz as well. Diaz’s MMA-boxing is some of the greatest offensive striking you’re ever going to see in MMA. If Condit’s going to win, it will be sometime in the first four minutes. It’ll be a quick flash knockout if Condit does get the better of Diaz. But if it goes longer than four minutes, I think Diaz will have this and will be destroying Condit’s body and head with hundreds and hundreds of punches. It’s going to be a great night in the 209.