Suspended UFC welterweight Nick Diaz is "strongly considering" challenging the ruling handed down on Monday by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Said ruling requiresthat Diaz be suspended for a year - retroactive to his UFC 143 fight against Carlos Condit - and be fined 30 percent of his purse and bonus from that fight, according to a Tuesday morning report on MMAFighting.com.
Considering that Diaz's fine for testing positive for marijuana metabolites amounts to some $60,000, it's not all that surprising that the "Pride of Stockton" would want to put up a fight. However, given that the former Strikeforce Welterweight Champion declared himself to be retired after losing to Condit in February, it's interesting to see that the enigmatic Diaz is taking a significant interest in when he's eligible to return to the cage.
That having been said, it's quite possible that Diaz's suspension is the best thing for him.
The truth about Diaz is that there's really only one fight that the MMA world is dying to see him take on: the battle with Georges St-Pierre that was supposed to take place at UFC 137, and then again at UFC 143. Diaz's trash talk about the UFC Welterweight Champion has successfully raised the ire of the normally genteel St-Pierre, and Diaz is one of the few fighters on the planet who has the skills and temperament to truly challenge St-Pierre. While St-Pierre can normally use his striking to keep top wrestlers and grapplers at bay (as he did Josh Koscheck at UFC 124 and Jake Shields at UFC 129) and use his wrestling and jiu-jitsu to take strikers out of their element (as he did Dan Hardy at UFC 111), Diaz's penchant for wild slugfests and black-belt level jiu-jitsu presents a dual threat that few other fighters can claim.
St-Pierre, though, is otherwise occupied. The Montreal native is still recovering from the ACL injury that forced him out of the planned fight with Diaz in February, and when he is ready to return to competition, he'll have to face Condit, who won the UFC Interim Welterweight Championship at UFC 143 and is guaranteed the next shot at St-Pierre. That fight is being targeted for November at UFC 154 in Montreal, which means that the earliest St-Pierre would be available to fight Diaz would be February 2013, right around the time Diaz's suspension ends. That's convenient timing if it works out.
None of this is to say, of course, that the UFC couldn't find something to do with Diaz if he were available to fight. The UFC had been interested in setting up a return match with Condit before news of the suspension broke, and the welterweight division is one of the UFC's deepest, with fighters like Josh Koscheck, Jon Fitch, Johny Hendricks, Jake Ellenberger and Martin Kampmann on the roster. However, the reality is that Diaz would simply be keeping busy until he could fight St-Pierre, and given how unreliable Diaz has been thus far in his return to the UFC, it's probably just as well that he'll be out of action until February.