UFC 143 PREDICTIONS AND DISCUSSION

UFC 143 is coming to you live tonight from fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. In case you didn't already know, Carlos Condit and taking on Nick Diaz in the main event for the interim welterweight title.

Things are scheduled to kick off at AROUND 7:10 eastern time for 2 prelim fights on Facebook.com/UFC.  Then at 8:00 eastern time you can catch 4 fights for free on FX . Finally at 10:00pm eastern time, plunk down your hard earned dollars to watch the Pay Per View main card.

Your prediction results and leaderboard ranking will automatically show up in any posts made here. If you want to embed your full listing of picks you can do that also.   Your picks, as well as a link to embed the image, and the top of the site-wide leaderboard will all be available in the right column on this thread.

Enjoy the fights and good luck in your predictions! 

REMINDER: No requesting of or posting links to illegal streams of the Pay Per View broadcast.

Nate gave Nick the best advice tonight after the 3rd round (I think):  "You can let him come to you, too."  trying to get Nick to force Condit to engage and initiate the action, but Nick wasn't hearing that ****. 

While Condit threw a large quantity of leg kicks, there wasn't a lot of quality in them.  After 68 leg kicks Diaz shot and took Condits back in the 23rd minute.  Effective leg kicks and that shot wouldn't have been that easy to get, especially considering he stuffed both attempts in the 4th round.  

I didn't really care who won this fight, but if Condit is going to become a game plan fighter I really hope he comes up with a more aggressive and offense oriented attack for GSP. If he doesn't and he tries to win with this style he used tonight he will get ate up.  The Condit that leveled the Stun Gun and was on a 3 KO win streak is the Condit I think can beat GSP.

In light of Diaz providing us with another post fight in octagon post fight retirement I see two scenarios in which he comes back to fight. A rematch with Condit or a fight with GSP.  I don't know that Condit will want to give Nick a rematch so i am gonna say that has a 35% chance of happening.  If GSP tells Dana that he wants to fight Nick, will Condit take a fight with Koschek in the meantime? or will he say I want GSP?  After watching Condit in the post fight presser I get the feeling that he is done with Diaz since he stated over and over, "that he feels he picked him apart." 

I am going out on a limb and saying that around Memorial Day Weekend 2012 Condit-Diaz II goes down.

I dont like to ***** but I disliked watching mma in 3D. Apart from it bothering the eyes after a while, it took away from the  actual fight.

Diaz-Condit Scorecard: http://i.imgur.com/JFDgi.jpg


(Personally, I agreed with the white judge the most significantly.)

* Edited at 02.05.2012, 3:28 AM ET *

Good to know @kallous I was considering watching one in 3D

Yeah.. Condit should have just stood in front of Diaz with his hands down and went out there and "banged" Gameplans are way overrated, bro.

Lol GSP didnt look very impressive against Shields. Condit fought the toughest WW there is. A super talented one dangerous everywhere. Just because he didnt look that good doesnt mean GSP would destroy him. Its all relative man. I bet GSP wouldnt have looked all that great against Nick Diaz either. Condit has much better finishing power than GSP, and is a better striker. He is also dangerous off his back and has shown he can fight a smart game. Not an easy fight for GSP.

Pow! Right in the kisser!

SERIOUSLY the 2 judges had Nick winning the 3rd and losing the rest...******* amazingly terrible. Not much you can expect from 2 ******'s and Cecil Peoples though.

i'm just gonna vote lackluster of the night....drumroll.....koscheck
gout outstruck by Pierce and didn't looked like a top 10, he nearly got a split decision after all his trash talk

@legacy Your boy Diaz didn't do much either so stop hating

Koscheck didn't look great but I had him winning 29-28. Interesting he's not at San Jose anymore, I'd love to see him and Fitch duke it out.

@swick He'll still be training with Fitch

I quit mma "Nick Diaz" sorry to mock his fans and yes Greg I brought it on myself but if you look at my posts from 4 months ago I was saying the same thing. I saw Diaz throw 30 punches in that fight LIVE and none of them counted. I mingled my whole way through the Nelson fight... Too many hot ladies here in Vegas on the plus side I broke a fight up right outside the arena and the stupid pos I was trying to help get outta there got arrested cause he wouldn't listen G'damn Vegas everyone with their balls their throats never pay attention to us local trying to help them....Don't they realize we were all kids once. lol I took 1 punch from 1 guy musta been from the east coast......Frankie your doom comes with the name Benson........

Why is it that everytime I see either of the Diaz faces they look like their pouting that is not thug at all.............. "Don't hate homie"

I'm happy with this. 

Thoughts:

Barao didn't run through Jorgensen like I somewhat expected he would (not that I underestimated Jorgensen), but he still looked damn good. He slowed down a bit in the third, but he trained for a 3 round fight, I think he'll have that problem fixed against Cruz. His striking has come so far, and his ground game is so good. And damn can Jorgensen take a hit.

Condit/Diaz went as I expected and hoped it would. I knew Condit would win if he could make it a technical battle, and he did. If it weren't Diaz that lost no one would be saying anything about the decision. That was a clear cut win.

Werdum finally lived up to my expectations for him, surprised he couldn't finish from the back though. Striking looked great. 

Pierce also did exactly what I thought he'd do. Surprise with solid wrestling, land a lot of stiff jabs, but ultimately get edged out by the veteran and slightly better wrestler. People thought Pierce would get blown out of the water just because of name recognition, but people have to look at match ups. I thought Kos would win, but I didn't think it'd be easy.

Finally Herman... pretty cool I guess.

Prelims wise: Wonderboy made me proud, Poirier got out struck and won by sub, like I suspected. I was as impressed with Holloway as I knew I would be. Bruce Leroy's ground game completely surprised me. Could have been a different fight without those brutal ball shots, but those did get Figueroa the decision. I thought Figueroa would have a decisive edge on the ground. I was very, very wrong. Great sub defense though. Brown was solid, Riddle was solid. Missed the sapo fight.


Sorry for longwinded post. I hate not participating in these discussions, wanted to get my opinions out there.

@ minotauro11 that wonderboy kick was so loud live the Arena... KO of the night for sure

Haha, it was loud? Awesome.

 I didn't get to see these fights live, so I missed the facebook fights. I told my friend to text me who wins the Thomson fight. I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear he won by headkick ko in the first.

That fake leg kick that set up the head kick was just beautiful. 

Wow, I didn't do so hot. I've never been one to necessarily "play the odds", but I always have a good time.

Condit fought a great fight, he out smarted Diaz and didn't know how to change plans. The Diaz trolls at MMA Junkie are getting to be as bad as the Yahoo MMA trolls. Diaz lost, he's only good when people are right in front of him, Condit is the I-Champ and will bring a smart strategy to try on GSP.

**** if not for that decision I'd be 11/11. Damn you judges. Damn you Diaz.