Last year the MMA community was rocked with some historic news, Zuffa the parent company of the UFC bought out their biggest rival to date:  Strikeforce. With Zuffa’s acquisition of Strikeforce , many were eager to see some of Strikeforce’s top talent crossover to the UFC for super fights that everyone had been waiting  years for. A few months later, the news was leaked that Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz was to challenge reigning UFC Welterweight Champion GSP for the belt at UFC 137 last October. This fight was highly anticipated and hyped. With a sold out venue in place, it was going to be a truly historic event. Leading up to the fight, Diaz no showed to two pre-fight press conferences back to back, and Dana White decided to pull the plug and take him out of the event all together.  Carlos Condit, who was originally scheduled to fight B.J Penn, was pulled up to the main event to fight GSP for the title due to Diaz’s absence. With Condit getting a different fight, that left Penn without an opponent, but Dana White turned the tables once again and put Diaz back into the event to face “The Prodigy’’. The card was shaken up but it seemed that everything was going to be set, until the news broke out that GSP suffered a knee injury that taken him out the event. Condit decided to wait until the Champion was healed , which left the battle between Penn and Diaz to headline UFC 137. Diaz and Penn met in the octagon last October .The end result was Penn losing a heavily a one sided decision to the former Strikeforce Champion. Diaz looked outstanding in the fight and opened up many eyes, picking apart Penn like nobody has before.  After the fight the Stockton bad boy called out GSP and said that he was afraid and was faking that he was injured. At the post fight press conference Dana White made the decision to let Diaz leap frog over Condit to challenge GSP for the title at UFC 143. All the changes in opponents and drama that occurred, worked out in Nick Diaz’s favor ,and he ultimately got what he wanted. Once again the fight between Diaz and GSP was put back on, until another tragedy derailed it from happening once again. GSP suffered another more serious knee injury which has taken him out of UFC 143 and out of  action for many months to come. So the UFC decided to put Condit and Diaz against one another to fight for the Interim Welterweight title, which later on would be unified with the winner fighting GSP later on in 2012. This fight will be spectacular, with both fighters at the top of their games; sparks are going to fly in the octagon. Diaz and Condit both know the importance of this fight and are going to bring it this weekend. UFC 143 is going to be available on PPV this Saturday with one of the most highly anticipated events in MMA history. You do not want to miss out.  Please come to cagesidesports.com and put your picks in on our Cageside King Game for the chance to win some pretty cool  prizes courtesy of CagedArtWear.com !

Photos Courtesy of Zuffa LLC

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