Carlos Condit ruined everything.
Nick Diaz lost his long-awaited title shot, Georges St. Pierre will miss out on the fight he wanted, and the UFC now is faced with the task of hyping a fight with no bad blood and little fan interest. And though Condit was awarded the victory in the interim welterweight title bout against Diaz, he received a lot of criticism for the strategy he used.
Like it or not, Condit is now the UFC interim welterweight champion. The welterweight division now finds itself in a strange position; Condit, the interim champion, has declared he does not want to fight anyone but the champion, St. Pierre, and is willing to wait for him to heal to make that fight happen.
A few days from UFC 143, one thing has become apparent: interim titles are completely pointless.
If, for whatever reason, a champion is unable to defend his title, the logical thing to do is to strip him of it after a certain amount of time has passed. Part of being champion is defending that title against other top contenders; if a fighter is unable to fulfill that requirement, he should not be champion.
UFC interim titles have usually been awarded when the champion has been sidelined due to injury and is unable to defend his title — the idea behind the concept being that a championship should be contested regularly. But interim champions rarely ever defend their belts; they usually try to unify their title with the champion’s in their very next fight.
Of the six interim champions the UFC has crowned, only one, “Minotauro” Noguiera, has attempted to defend his title. All the others simply went on to fight the champion of their respective divisions. If the winner of the interim title is only going to be matched up with the real champion, what is the point of having two champions to begin with?
True, a championship fight is more lucrative than a regular fight between two top contenders, but those fighters are essentially contesting a meaningless belt. Having two men walking around with identical championship belts is a cheap ploy used in pro wrestling that has no place in real competition.
Listening to Condit talk, you’d think he’d won a “number one contender” trophy instead of an interim championship. The fact is he was given a belt because the welterweight division needed one to be defended — Condit has a responsibility to defend it.
If Condit wants to be considered a champion, he has to take on challengers — a real champion doesn’t pick his fights. The UFC should either make their interim champions defend their belts, or do away with them altogether, because at the moment, no one seems to be taking them seriously.