Just days ago it was announced that Spike TV would be very strongly counter programing the UFC's debut on Fox. This season of The Ultimate Fighter will end the partnership between the two companies.
Today's UFC 135 Pre-Fight Press Conference takes place at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. The event will feature UFC president Dana White, headliners Jon Jones and Quinton Jackson, and co-headliners Josh Koscheck and Matt Hughes.
The final season of The Ultimate Fighter will begin airing on Spike TV next Wednesday, Sept. 21 at 10 p.m. ET. Coaching this season will be Michael Bisping and Jason "Mayhem" Miller who will meet at the finale on Dec. 3 in Las Vegas.
For 24 hours Nick Diaz was out of UFC 137.
Now, he is back on the card, but not with his original opponent.
UFC President Dana White announced via Twitter that Diaz (25-7, 1 NC) will be facing former UFC Lightweight and Welterweight Champion BJ Penn (16-7-2) at UFC 137 in Las Vegas.
When fighters are given the opportunity to fight for a world championship, 99.9 percent of them would do everything above and beyond to maximize the chance they were given. When you say 99.9%, who would the .1% be? That would be Nick Diaz.
Dana White had no other option than to pull Nick Diaz from his championship fight with Georges St-Pierre at UFC 137 when he decided not to show up for the press tour. His replacement was none other than Carlos Condit. The fans immediate reaction was very negative towards Nick not showing up, but from this video that Nick released yesterday you can see that they should not be judging too soon.
We don’t know the facts so to judge someone like Nick Diaz right off the hop, like so many have done, is wrong. As of right now the UFC is not saying much. All we know as fans is that Nick Diaz no showed two large press conferences to promote his fight with GSP at UFC 137 on October 29th. The reasons? Time will only tell. Caesar Gracie stated today that Nick is not a fan of press and media before a fight and that he deals with a disorder. We have seen Nick Diaz pull stunts like this before but not to this degree.
After plenty of speculation as to who Brock Lesnar would be fighting for his comeback fight and whether the UFC would sign Alistair Overeem, those speculations have been put to rest.
