Injured Georges St. Pierre replaced by Carlos Condit at UFC 143

It appears the UFC may have upset an elderly gypsy at some point in the past six months as the long-awaited bout between Georges St. Pierre and Nick Diaz has been put on hold again after the popular Canadian welterweight tore his ACL while training for their February 4 fight at UFC 143. As a result, GSP will be out for up to ten months and Diaz will instead face Carlos Condit in St. Pierre’s place with an interim title on the line.

News of the change surfaced earlier today when UFC President Dana White took to Twitter to relay it.

This is the second time their match-up has been laid to waste with the first instance occurring a few months back when Diaz failed to appear for two press conferences promoting the pairing and was ironically replaced by Condit because of it (with that fight then falling apart after St. Pierre suffered a different knee injury).

Condit was originally set to face Josh Koscheck at UFC 143 and should be fully prepared when he faces off with Diaz. “The Natural Born Killer” holds an overall record of 27-5 and has won his last four fights including finishes of Rory MacDonald and Dong Hyun Kim.

Nothing was mentioned in relation to what will be done with Koscheck.

PHOTO CREDIT – UFC

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MMATraining Take: With the UFC now having five-round non-title fights I fail to see the point of involving an interim belt. It doesn’t make the match-up more marketable than it would be without it and ultimately the strap means nothing to the person who wears it since he/she wants to be the REAL champ, not a pretend one.