UFC 143: Nick Diaz's trainer Cesar Gracie blasts Nevada judges after Diaz's loss to Carlos Condit
By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Nick Diaz wasn't very happy on Saturday night when the judges' scorecards were announced in favor of Carlos Condit in their UFC 143 main event. Condit took the decision with scores of 48-47, 49-46, and 49-46, a result that Diaz and his camp simply couldn't believe.
They were so in shock at the result that Diaz's manager Cesar Gracie said on Monday that he thinks the judges don't like Diaz.
"No I don't obviously [think Condit won], [Diaz] clearly won that fight," Gracie said in an interview with Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour at MMAFighting.com (transcribed by BJPenn.com). "I've been there when Nicks lost fights and have told him you kind of let that one go... But this fight it was very clear. I was kind of shocked when I was in the cage, we were pretty much all in disbelief especially when the judges scores where read...
"If you repeat that first round five times you're still gonna lose because every judge had Nick losing that first round, so there was nothing we could have done... In my opinion I don't think the judges like Nick. He talks in the ring, Carlos was running in the ring and at one point Nick slapped him and told him to stop running. Nick thought it was going to be a dog fight."
Gracie believes the judges in Nevada have it out for Diaz, and vehemently disagreed with the decision they handed out. Because of that, it's a hard loss for him and Diaz's entire team to accept.
"I don't know what the judges where looking at," Gracie said. "They don't like Nick in Vegas, they never award him a decision there except the B.J. fight and we almost had to kill B.J. to get that. I don't think we can get a fair fight, I don't think we can get fair judging in that state at all... I don't know how they scored it that way I truly don't.... If Nick would have been knocked out by Carlos I would have felt better about it than I do right now."
Penick's Analysis: I gave my breakdown of the main event yesterday, and the thing Diaz and his camp refuse to accept is that Diaz didn't do a whole lot of anything himself in the fight. One of the reasons he didn't win several of those rounds is because he simply wasn't connecting on much when he was walking Condit down. Conversely, Condit was connecting on his kicks and short combinations. Had three of the rounds looked like round two then Diaz would have a case, but they didn't. It wasn't that the judges didn't like Diaz in the cage, it's that Diaz wasn't effective, at least not nearly enough to have a true complaint in this one.
[Nick Daiz art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]