I understand why UFC boss Dana White would consider booking a rematch between interim welterweight champ Carlos Condit and Nick Diaz. It’s one of the most argued-about fights in recent memory. But I have no clue why fans would want to see it. Condit eked out a narrow but clear victory and has nothing to prove by giving Diaz the opportunity to make the adjustments he failed to do through five rounds at UFC 143. It’s not as though this was Lyoto Machida and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and an obvious failure in judging.

A win by Diaz in a rematch would not prove he’s the better fighter, only that he was able to learn from his mistakes. He couldn’t get Condit against the cage, got frustrated when Condit wouldn’t just stand there and let him hit him, and then failed completely to cut off the cage as Condit circled away and returned fire. Plain and simple. Very plain and simple. So simple, in fact, that I’d be surprised if Diaz didn’t win a rematch simply because the holes in his game the first time were so glaringly obvious to everyone except him. That doesn’t mean he deserves another shot, never mind that he probably doesn’t even want one.

Sure, Condit vs. Diaz II would give the UFC something to hype why we wait until Georges St. Pierre is healthy. But I’d rather see Condit take an extended vacation than watch a rematch. Besides, there are a handful of 170-pounders who would probably like a crack at that interim belt in the meantime, such as the winner of Thiago Alves vs. Martin Kampmann (slated for March 3).

I don’t understand the shock and outrage people are expressing over Carlos Condit’s unanimous-decision win to claim the interim welterweight belt at Saturday’s UFC 143.

Sure, I’ll admit to being mildly surprised, not because I thought Nick Diaz won, but because you never know what’s going to happen when a fight is left in the hands of the judges. And certainly Diaz vs. Condit is one of the closest five-rounders in UFC history. The fighters’ differing styles only made things murkier.

Diaz’s tendency to walk opponents down and pin them against the cage to pepper them with punches often gives the appearance that he’s dominating fights even if he’s not. And Condit’s strategy of not standing toe-to-toe with him, of being evasive and using lateral movements, backing away and resetting, gave naysayers the impression he was running away. I’ve heard Kalib Starnes‘ name invoked more than once in relation to Condit’s performance, which speaks to the ignorance many MMA fans have when it comes to the finer points of the striking game.

It was clear from the outset that Condit had a gameplan, one that he was able to execute with workmanlike if unflashy efficiency. You don’t beat a grappler by going to the mat, you don’t beat a striker by standing in the pocket and exchanging fire, and you don’t beat Diaz by doing either. If he’d stood in front of Diaz, allowed himself to be phoneboothed against the cage and beaten on (like BJ Penn), Diaz would’ve won and Condit would’ve been criticized for not circling out of the way. Instead, Condit stayed inside his own head, remained calm and picked his moments, while Diaz trash-talked and taunted and put on a show that suckered many into believing he was winning when really he was just a frustrated and angry little boy.

But only one of the fighters was doing any significant damage, thanks to a record-setting diet of thigh-numbing leg kicks and sharp 1-2 combinations. FightMetric credits Condit with landing 68 total kicks, helping him earn the overall striking advantage 151-105. Granted, Condit landed many of those strikes while moving away, but they still landed. He picked his shots and then got the hell out of the way; that’s called smart tactical striking. It wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty effective, and if his name was Lyoto Machida no one would be arguing he didn’t win.

Pro-Diaz pundits also point to Diaz’s octagon control, as if merely standing in the middle of the cage is enough to warrant a win. I don’t think anyone wants to watch fights where that’s a deciding factor. And yes, Diaz did finally take Condit down in the last two minutes of the fight, but he failed to really threaten with a submission, certainly not enough to overcome the damage Condit had already inflicted.

What it comes down to is that Condit refused to play in Diaz’s sandbox and Diaz behaved like a two-year-old suck afterward. He says he’s going to retire, which, if true, is disappointing. He still brings an energy and attitude — and divisiveness — to every fight. For example, consider how exciting the buildup to the Diaz vs. Georges St. Pierre welterweight unification bout would have been compared to Condit vs. GSP. UFC boss Dana White might say he’s not upset that Condit won, but I’m sure, marketing-wise, he’d much rather be hyping Diaz vs. GSP.

I was so bored by last Saturday’s UFC on Fox three-bout main card that I forgot to write my reactions to it. Even the animated rock ‘em sock ‘em robots during the opening credits were more memorable.

Chael Sonnen looked horrible in a decision win over Michael Bisping and Rashad Evans looked similarly unimpressive while outclassing Phil Davis, which makes me even less inspired to watch Sonnen’s rematch with middleweight champ Anderson Silva or Evans’ tilt with light heavyweight champ Jon Jones. Neither stands a chance. Not even Sonnen, who came within a couple of minutes and a triangle of beating Silva the first time around, looks like he’s got anything in the arsenal that Silva won’t be ready for. And I don’t see how Evans has a hope of getting close enough to his pal-turned-nemesis to put him down. Just not going to happen.

At least we’ve got a solid UFC 143 on Saturday to look forward to. Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit locking horns over the welterweight interim title has me wondering whether I’d rather see Diaz win so that Georges St. Pierre can shut him up in the fall, or Condit shut him up right now. Tough call. Count me as a Roy Nelson fan and a Fabricio Werdum fan, so that heavyweight tilt has me calling “pick ‘em,” while Renan Barao and preliminary carders Dustin Poirier and the grinning lunatic Matt Riddle each have bouts that will have my attention.

Chael Sonnen seems to think he’s Muhammad Ali (starting at the 5:30 mark of the video below), and I have to admit I’m amused by it. Of course, it’s a put-on. He’s found a shtick that works for him, that no one else outside of professional wrestling is using, and he’s using it. Here’s hoping he trashes Michael Bisping so we can see how he handles promoting a rematch with Anderson Silva (assuming Silva isn’t too injured to fight him).

I feel a bit badly for Demian Maia. While Chael Sonnen is carrying around a fake UFC belt and preparing to face Michael Bisping at Saturday’s UFC on Fox card, with the winner slated for a title shot, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace has seen his contender status take a bit of a nosedive as a result.

Originally scheduled to fight Bisping on the card, a bout that would definitely move the winner into the number two slot for a crack at champ Anderson Silva, Maia has to settle for late replacement Chris Weidman. While Weidman is no slouch — he’s a two-time NCAA division I All-American wrestler, an ADCC competitor and owner of a three-fight win streak in the UFC — beating him won’t do much to move Maia toward the belt. And a loss means he’ll probably never get another crack at it.

Still, I have to believe Maia will walk over Weidman, who admitted at Thursday’s press conference that being a late replacement for Bisping means he’s not 100 percent ready. Maia also has infinitely superior jiu-jitsu skills, continually improving striking and he’s been in tougher battles with tougher opponents. So I have no idea why odds makers have Maia as the underdog.

As someone who’s gotten in a few heated exchanges and altercations with movie theatre assholes, I can appreciate Ronda Rousey’s story about confronting an Ugg-wearing seat kicker (4:20 mark of the first video).

Rousey, who’s known just as much for her shoot-from-the-lip Chael Sonnen attitude as her four armbar wins in four minutes, will challenge Strikeforce women’s 135-pound champ Miesha Tate on March 3. I just wish she didn’t sound so much like an entitled high schooler when she talks.

She also brings up an interesting if debatable point at the 5:00 mark of the video below when she argues that Nick Diaz beating Georges St. Pierre would be good for the sport:

“It’s not the Olympics. It’s not about just coming home and bringing home a medal, and just having hardware and getting the win. It’s about pulling more fans in, and being entertaining. I think that fighters that just try to win by points and come away with a win are actually bad for the sport. If you never saw MMA before, and you walked in and you saw GSP and Koscheck, and all this jabbing out the whole time, it looks like a boring boxing match. And I don’t think you gain any fans with a fight like that. And so I really hope that Nick Diaz beats the crap out of him, because Nick Diaz is entertaining, and he’s an entertaining character in general. He might not be popular but I mean I can’t help but watch every video he puts out on YouTube. I think it’s funny as hell. And every single one of his fights is a brawl. It’s not like a pitter-pat match where afterwards he goes ‘Were friends, were all friends, buy Gatorade and let’s go home.’ I think that’s boring. GSP was good for the sport for a while. He brought in some big sponsors like Gatorade and UnderArmor. But I think he’s done everything he can in a positive way and he needs to step aside and let Nick Diaz kick his ass.”

She’s not wrong in that it would excite the welterweight division by levelling the playing field a bit. It would make match-ups in the division far more exciting because no longer would fighters be battling to be the next one to lose to the champ. But GSP does more for the sport in terms of attracting new fans and conveying a sense of civility and respectability that it would hurt the sport if he weren’t champion.

There’s an old adage in movies: if you introduce a gun, somebody’s going to get shot. Haywire inspires a related question: Why put Gina Carano in handcuffs if you’re not going to then make her fight a swarm of bad guys?

That’s just one of the more puzzling elements of the Steven Soderbergh-helmed spy thriller. Granted, I’m using the term “spy thriller” loosely.

Haywire is not the movie the trailers are trying to sell you, which is The Bourne Identity with boobs. Instead, it’s a soft-focus, low-key jazzy arthouse “fuck you” to quick-cut Michael Bayhem-style ADD action spectacles. It’s the anti-Bourne, a watered-down martini that leaves you neither shaken nor stirred.

And yet there’s something there, something in its ultra-cool ‘70s vibe that makes you forgive the by-the-numbers story, the sluggish pacing, the cheap made-for-cable quality. While the sum of Haywire’s parts adds up to a pilot for a TV series about a hot ass-kicking CIA super-agent, like Alias without all the glitz and glam and Jane Bond shine, it’s that very stripped-down pseudo-realism that provides the biggest punch.

The chases unspool with a determined this-is-what-it-would-really-be-like feel, while the fights deliver a degree of verisimilitude missing from 99 percent of on-screen fisticuffs. Nothing fancy, nothing CGI-enhanced, no wire fu. Just abrupt and brutal, punches, kicks, a couple of chokes. No actress could’ve pulled them off as well as Gina Carano. She is the first female action star you actually believe could beat up her larger, stronger male opponents. She throws a punch the way it should be thrown, and she takes one the same way. Stick Angelina Jolie in there and it would be like watching a stick figure on a string. And for the most part, Soderbergh just stands back and lets her do her thing.

On the acting side, Carano has charisma, charm and she mostly holds her own opposite heavyweight thesps like Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas. Occasionally she appears a bit out of her depth, although her acting never dips to porn-star levels, but she’s also not relied upon to deliver any great depth or emotion. And her voice, which was inexplicably digitally lowered in post-production, is only distracting in the first few moments and then only if you know what she really sounds like.

In the end, Haywire is not the explosive action debut many hoped it would be for Carano. What it is, though, is something smarter, a genre exercise that flexes some pretty big muscles. It’s more interesting than exciting, a diversion that’s both ponderous and worth pondering.

Still, it makes me wonder why the shackled Carano wasn’t called upon to battle her way out of that predicament. I guess that was one more cliché Soderbergh opted to avoid.

Is posing for photos with fans really the best way to spend the final few seconds before stepping into the octagon? I mean, it’s cool that Melvin Guillard felt comfortable and relaxed enough to do that (7:45 mark), but it seems strange and perhaps distracting. Granted, if he’d beaten Jim Miller at last weekend’s UFC on FX instead of tapping out to a rear-naked choke then I’d feel differently. I also appreciate Guillard’s display of sportsmanship after the loss, even going so far as to kiss Miller on the forehead.

Oh yeah, and I’m sick of Jon Jones. Can he go away until his next fight please?

Chances are a blow to the back of the head isn’t what you think it is. Even I was surprised by the narrow parameters of what constitutes such an illegal strike (and I’m the first one to cry foul whenever they occur). This video with “Big John” McCarthy certainly clarifies the matter and is mandatory viewing for anyone who’s ever voiced an opinion on the subject. Are you paying attention, Mario Yamasaki?

I get that the UFC is trying to break out of the box it’s in, grab some mainstream attention, appeal to sporting Joes and maybe a housewife or two. But I’m not sure this ad, which aired during Sunday’s NFL playoffs on Fox, really works.

You can see that it really really wants to be one of those classic Super Bowl commercials that everybody talks about the day after. And it’s mildly humorous, light heavyweight champ Jon Jones is certainly likable, and who hasn’t wanted to punt a toddler into the stratosphere? But the CGI looks cheap and there’s no footage of fighting or anything to connect this with MMA at all. Nice try, though.