UFC 158 Full Update

UFC 158 takes place on 3/16 at the Bell Centre in Montreal, and looks like it’ll be headlined by Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz for the welterweight title, Rory MacDonald vs. Carlos Condit, Johny Hendricks vs. Jake Ellenberger and a Patrick Cote vs. ?. The Cote fight was supposed to be an Alessio Sakara rematch, but Sakara is suffering from kidney issues and won’t be able to fight that soon. It’s awfully quick to come back to Montreal, although GSP vs. Diaz is a big fight and the undercard is strong, being pushed as having six of the best welterweights in the world in the top six matches. Hopefully other fighters will learn from MacDonald’s promo and getting the fight he wanted and it immediately being made and put in a feature position of what will be most likely the biggest PPV of the first six months of next year. Nowhere is it more true than in fight promotion that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Hendricks being put on the show ends any talk that he would be sitting out a long period of time waiting for a title shot. It also puts the pressure on Diaz in some ways, because Hendricks already in training means that if Diaz screws up such as blowing off press conferences (he won’t be blowing off any random drug tests most likely in Montreal because Quebec doesn’t do out of competition testing), Hendricks will be right there ready as a sub. The Hendricks vs. Ellenberger winner is likely to get the next welterweight title shot (Dana White said it would happen), and don’t count Ellenberger out at all in such a match-up. As much as I don’t like the idea of Hendricks having to win one more fight since a 14-1 record and consecutive wins over Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck and Martin Kampmann should not only be enough to make him the clear-cut No. 1 contender, but should put him in strong contention for fighter of the year. This does give him a three month window to make himself a bigger name based on being passed over and thus when they get to his fight it’s bigger. But the way Ellenberger matches up with him, Ellenberger absolutely has a shot at winning, particularly early since Ellenberger fades and Hendricks’ conditioning has been a great weapon in close fights. This way they get the Diaz fight that they’ve been trying to make for almost two years and have announced twice with it falling through each time, once due to Diaz no-showing two press conferences and being pulled and once due to GSP tearing his ACL in training. That should be big fight and in theory you would have the Hendricks fight be bigger by not happening first. But you are risking the Hendricks fight because Ellenberger is no gimmee. After all the injuries, they are now booking with obvious backup plans with both Ellenberger and Hendricks there if Diaz gets hurt, and with MacDonald, Condit and Hendricks there if GSP gets hurt as potential opponents for Diaz.