UFC 137's Cheick Kongo aiming for rematch with 'lucky' champ Cain Velasquez

LAS VEGAS – Slow and steady wins the race, though fighting ugly does little to win fans.

Cheick Kongo knows Saturday's UFC 137 co-main-event win over Matt Mitrione wasn't a signature or highlight-reel win that dazzled fans, but it served its purpose.

It got him one step closer to a rematch with champ Cain Velasquez, whom Kongo said was "lucky" in their first meeting.

Kongo (17-6-2 MMA, 10-4-1 UFC) earned a unanimous-decision victory over the previously unbeaten Mitrione (5-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) in the pay-per-view co-headliner of UFC 137, which took place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. An action-light first round was showered in boos, though Kongo picked up the pace for an effective third round that led to the victory.

"Most of the time, when I win a fight, I can say it was exciting," Kongo told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) after the event. "But I was kind of slow.

"I was expecting to exchange more than I did tonight. I wanted to see what he would do specifically. The last round, I just decided to go for it."

The chiseled Frenchman finds himself in a peculiar situation. As one of the elder statesmen of the UFC's heavyweight division, Kongo has logged more than five years and 15 fights with the world's top MMA promotion. He previously faltered in big fights, but he's now on a 3-0-1 run, and he's determined not to fill the dreaded "gatekeeper" role – one that gets you high-profile fights but no real shot at the title.

After all, Kongo is confident he can take out current champ and heavyweight kingpin Cain Velasquez. He nearly did it two-and-a-half years ago at UFC 99, when Kongo twice buckled Velasquez only to be squelched by his limited ground game.

Kongo, though, said he wasn't 100 percent for the fight, which contributed to Velasquez's "lucky" win.

"Of course I would like to get this opportunity to fight for the belt and face Cain Velasquez," said Kongo, who's made strides in his ground game. "To get just three weeks to train and get hurt during the few weeks during the preparation [for that fight], I can say, it made me sad.

"I just want to ... have the chance to prepare for the next time, six months or whatever, to face him. I had no legs last time. Now I've come back. I've got all my skills ready to do that. ... It's been a long time now – maybe five years in the UFC. I got a chance to improve myself here with my skills. I think I didn't show everything (against Mitrione). I would like to face [Velasquez] again and get my chance to fight for the title."

Against Mitrione, a hard-hitting NFL vet who's quickly adapted to the MMA game, Kongo probably didn't move up the contenders' list too much. But a loss could have moved him down quickly. That knowledge admittedly influenced his performance, for better or worse.

"People say, 'You're good. You did a good job before, and now is the time to come back and get your opportunity to fight for the belt – to try to be the next contender,'" Kongo said. "I just tried to save my position. 'Don't push too much but just end the fight.' That's what I did.

"He tried to hurt me, but honestly, I was confident. He's a good puncher, but he didn't hurt me. I was completely OK during the bout. I wanted to see if he could do more. That's why I was a little bit shy about the exchanges in the first two rounds."

UFC 137 bonuses: Diaz, Penn, Palaszewski and Cerrone earn $75,000 awards

LAS VEGAS – Nick Diaz, B.J. Penn, Bart Palaszewski and Donald Cerrone each earned $75,000 fight-night bonuses for their performances at Saturday's UFC 137 event.

Palaszewski earned the night's "Knockout of the Night" award, Cerrone picked up the "Submission of the Night" bonus, and Diaz and Penn took home "Fight of the Night" honors.

MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) learned of the bonus winners and award amounts at UFC 137's post-fight press conference.

UFC 137 took place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The night's main card aired on pay-per-view, and Facebook and Spike TV carried portions of the preliminary card.

Palaszewski earned his award with a vicious first-round knockout of fellow featherweight Tyson Griffin in one of the night's two Spike TV fights. Once he backed Griffin against the cage, Palaszewski unloaded the fight-ending and lightning-quick barrage of punches.

In the other Spike TV fight, Cerrone earned his award by default since no other fighter claimed a submission win on the night. However, his rear-naked-choke submission of fellow lightweight contender Dennis Siver concluded another dominant performance for the WEC vet, and it was set up by a flush shin-to-chin head kick and accurate strikes.

Diaz and Penn fought in the heavily anticipated welterweight headliner. After dropping the first round when Penn proved accurate with his strikes, Diaz turned on the heat in the next two rounds and battered the former champion like he's never been battered before. The assault led him to a unanimous-decision victory and apparently sent Penn into retirement.

With UFC champ St-Pierre livid, Condit gives way to Diaz for Me die weekend fight

LAS VEGAS – Once again, Nick Diaz (26-7 MMA, 7-4 UFC) proves to be just the right kind of crazy.

Moments after defeating MMA legend B.J. Penn in the main event of Saturday night's UFC 137 event, Diaz told a Mandalay Bay Events Center crowd he thinks UFC champ Georges St-Pierre (22-2 MMA, 16-2 UFC) faked an injury in order to avoid a fight.

The move earned St-Pierre's attention, and UFC president Dana White said Carlos Condit (27-5 MMA, 4-1 UFC) has agreed to step aside in order to make the fight it seems everyone now wants to see.

"I've known Georges St-Pierre since 2004," White said at the evening's post-event press conference in Las Vegas. "He's one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and he's always exactly the same no matter what the situation is, no matter who he's fighting. Since 2004, I've never seen him like he was tonight. Georges St-Pierre flipped out tonight after Nick Diaz was in the ring, and Nick needs motivation. He's got it. He's going to fight Georges St-Pierre.

"Carlos Condit has agreed to step aside and get the next guy. [St-Pierre] said, and I quote – you're going to think I'm full of [expletive], but this is the truth – I quote, 'He's the most disrespectful human being I've ever met, and I'm going to put the worst beating you've ever seen on him in the UFC."

White said the bout will likely take place Feb. 4 in Las Vegas, at the company's traditional Me die weekend event. Condit will also compete on the card, and a win guarantees him a shot at the winner of the St-Pierre vs. Diaz matchup.

And if Condit loses?

Despite lopsided UFC 137 win, Diaz unhappy with performance, training, finances

LAS VEGAS – While former Strikeforce champ Nick Diaz (26-7 MMA, 7-4 UFC) certainly didn't have the best first round of his professional career on Saturday night, he rebounded over the final 10 minutes in an epic beatdown of MMA legend B.J. Penn.

UFC president Dana White called the performance "awesome," and labeled both Diaz and Penn "warriors."

It's everything Diaz could have hoped for in his octagon return and yet it sounds as if it was nothing that he wanted. In fact, at Saturday night's post-event press conference, Diaz admitted he simply wasn't happy – about just about anything, really.

"I'm not happy with my performance at all," Diaz said of his win over Penn, which served as the main event of Saturday's UFC 137 event in Las Vegas. "I wasn't 100 percent today. I felt good, but just leading up to this fight, I went through a lot of hard times."

Diaz's recent "hard times" have been well-documented. Originally scheduled to compete in a title fight at UFC 137, a pair of missed promotional appearances resulted in him settling for a three-round affair with Penn. And while the 28-year-old Californian has often complained his financial struggles and the difficulty of daily life in his current home in Stockton, Diaz said things were especially tough this time around.

The culprit? Diaz's inability to secure adequate training partners, leaving him ill-prepared following a routine of just "the mandatory workouts and things."

"I can look a lot better than that," Diaz said. "I can do a lot better than that, and that's what I would like to do.

"I didn't have any sort of workouts like I have had in the past. I would have come out 10 times better than I look tonight, that's for sure. I don't take punches like that when I'm working out with guys like Andre Ward and the guys even that are working out with Andre Ward. If I could have got any of the sparring that I've had in the past, I would have been a lot more confident just having known that I worked out with some of these guys that are at that top level."

Ward, boxing's undefeated WBA world super middleweight super champion, was scheduled to defend his title on Saturday night, but a cut suffered in training forced him to reschedule his bout with Carl Froch. Diaz's trainer, Cesar Gracie, said the change proved troublesome when the entirety of Ward's disbanded camp declined to work with Diaz unless they were compensated for their time.

"We were supposed to work out with the Andre Ward camp," Gracie said. "The guys there, the professional boxers there, aren't going to box with us. That's part of the problem here. They all wanted 'X' amount of compensation, and Nick didn't get the boxing in for this one.

"Andre Ward got cut. He was out of the fight, so there was no training with Andre Ward, and there was no training with that whole camp over there with Nick Diaz. I think that was one of the things he was very unhappy about."

Diaz put it in much simpler terms.

"There's not enough money in this sport," Diaz told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). "You've got Floyd Mayweather making $25 million. He can't stop a double-leg. I had to go to school to learn how to do that [expletive]. I had to work hard, and I had to study every aspect. That's what we're doing out here. I think that if I was making a tiny piece of that that everybody I know would be compensated – everybody I know, including my family.

"They're not taking care of me because they're not compensated. My team needs to be compensated, and the people around me, they're not getting nothing out of it. They're not getting airtime. They're not getting paid like they should. My sparring partners, they're not getting paid like they should. That's why nobody wants any part of this. Nobody wants to help me train if they're not getting anything out of it, and I don't blame them.

"It's hard to find sparring these days. Nobody's ready, or they have to be in the best condition before they want to come in and work out with me now because everybody is intimidated or their trainer tells them, 'No, you can't go. It ain't good for you to go spar with that guy.' People aren't going to do this stuff. I'm not going to get the training I need unless these people are compensated for their efforts and what they're doing to help me."

Diaz and Gracie's explanations didn't sit especially well with White, who seemed to tire of the main-event winner's frequent calls for increased compensation.

"When you talk about boxing and what boxers make, there's a handful of guys that make Floyd Mayweather money," White told Gracie. "There's actually a couple guys that make Floyd Mayweather money. There's two. You've got (Manny) Pacquaio, and you've got Floyd. The rest of the guys, there's thousands of guys that make nothing. When you talk about being compensated for sparring, that is what you guys do. You guys set your camp, and you build your camp and bring guys in for sparring. Everybody does. That's what boxing does, too. And yes, you might compensate your guys.

"If you're fighting under the promoter, and he pays for it, he takes that out of your check. If you don't show up for six flights, you miss six flights to show up for a press conference, the promoter charges you for those six flights. We don't. We pay for them. We take it on the chin every time you miss a flight, and the list goes on and on.

"Believe me, I've heard the arguments from the guys in this sport about boxing. If you're pissed off at what's going on here, go try boxing and see how that works out for you. What's Andre Ward making a fight?"

While the brief interaction provided a few tense moments in Saturday's post-event press conference, cooler heads quickly prevailed. In the end, Diaz admitted the troubles he had preparing for the bout with Penn went back to the claim he was making from the day the fight was first announced. In short, he never wanted to face "The Prodigy."

"I don't like walking past [Penn and his camp] and having to give them dirty looks," Diaz said. "I don't like walking past them and having nobody want to say hi to me and shake hands like we don't know each other. That's just not the way it should be.

"I don't want to fight people I already know. I don't think that's what fighting is all about, and so I didn't want this fight. It wasn't motivating for me. It wasn't motivating for a lot of people because I wasn't motivated."

Regardless of how he feels about his performance, Diaz won't be short on motivation for his next outing. Diaz's in-cage comments that Georges St-Pierre was faking an injury in order to avoid a fight with him so infuriated the UFC welterweight champ that he requested an immediate matchup with his budding adversary.

Surely, that news would at least earn a Diaz smile, right?

Hardly.

"See how I've got to come off just to get a fight?" Diaz asked with a scowl. "I've got to come off like that just to get a fight. I've got to be the bad guy.

"You want to point the finger, make me the bad guy. I'm the bad guy, and now I get to fight."

St-Pierre and Diaz are expected to meet on Feb. 4 at the UFC's traditional Me die weekend event in Las Vegas.

Donald Cerrone vs. Nate Diaz targeted for UFC 141 in Las Vegas

A clash of hard-swinging lightweights is likely headed to the UFC's year-end show.

Multiple sources close to the event today informed MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) that Donald Cerrone (17-3 MMA 4-0 UFC) and Nate Diaz (14-7 MMA, 9-5 UFC) have verbally agreed to meet at UFC 141.

UFC 141 takes place Dec. 30 at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Cerrone vs. Diaz is expected to be part of the event's main card, which airs live on pay-per-view. As MMAjunkie.com first reported, the event also gets a two-fight "UFC Prelims" special on Spike TV.

Cerrone is fresh off a sweeping victory over top prospect Dennis Siver at this past weekend's UFC 137 event. After rocking the German on two occasions with head kicks, "Cowboy" cinched a rear-naked choke that brought the tapout at the midway point of round one. The victory, which earned him a $75,000 "Submission of the Night" bonus, was his sixth straight, all of which have come in the past 13 months.

Diaz, meanwhile, emerged from a two-fight skid in his most recent performance and picked up significant momentum with a first-round submission victory over Takanori Gomi at UFC 135. It was his first fight as a lightweight since he squared off with Gray Maynard at UFC Fight Night 23, after which he served a 2-2 stint as a welterweight.

The latest UFC 141 card now includes:
Brock Lesnar vs. Alistair Overeem
Donald Cerrone vs. Nate Diaz
Jon Fitch vs. Johny Hendricks
Alexander Gustafsson vs. Vladimir Matyushenko
Dong Hyun Kim vs. Sean Pierson
T.J. Grant vs. Jacob Volkmann


Source: Donald Cerrone vs. Nate Diaz targeted for UFC 141 in Las Vegas