Carlos Condit says people are already counting him out and that’s a mistake. Cesar Gracie says Nick Diaz has a focused anger and understands that Condit is just in his way and needs to be eliminated.

Condit trains in the high altitude by tiring himself out and then when he’s tired, he starts striking and grappling so his body gets used to performing when tired.

Greg Jackson says Diaz is better off his back than when he’s on the top when it comes to jiu-jitsu. He also tells Condit to fight his fight rather than to worry about what Diaz does when they get on the ground.

Diaz missed three fights into Vegas before making his flight. Both guys hate the media and all the other responsibilities that comes with being in the main event.

Condit wears a suit to the Thursday press conference. Nick Diaz wears a hoody as does Dana White. Diaz hates the questions because he’s moody from his weight cut. Condit hates the questions too and thinks he’s being overlooked. Both guys whined their way to the end of the show.

Bottom Line: The show wasn’t very interesting and there wasn’t much too it. There was no GSP either curiously. They both sort of looked bad at the end considering they were in the main event in a big fight and came off a bit like whiners.

I wonder if we’ll get more than 5 minutes of Nick Diaz this week?

Diaz says he started doing jiu-jitsu when he was about 15 or 16 and that’s when he met his MMA coach. He dropped out of school at the age of 16 to go into MMA full-time.

His Sambo coach said that he has his own drive and you don’t need to tell him to do things like run. Steve Heath, his MMA coach says that Diaz doesn’t have an off switch. He’s always training. He does marathon’s for fun.

Carlos Condit says that if he wasn’t a fighter, he’d be in the military and says that he’s a warrior. He loves shooting guns.

The Condits get together for family meals with 30 or 40 cousins. His dad says that when he gets closer to fight time, you see the happy Carlos less and less in favor of the determined Carlos.

The Diaz brothers are instructors at their gym. Imagine Nick and Nate instructing your kids in MMA. Nate says that Nick is his life coach. It seems like Nick can love his brother like he does because he can trust him.

Georges St. Pierre says he prays every night that Nick Diaz beats Carlos Condit so he can fight him when he’s healthy. GSP says that Diaz isn’t really crazy and that’s a fake crazy. GSP says he’s probably been in more street fights than Nick has.

Diaz says that in order to love fighting, he has to hate it. And he sort of makes sense in this weird circular way.

Bottom Line: They did a fantastic job of building up Nick Diaz vs. Georges St. Pierre and not such a great job building up Diaz vs. Carlos Condit. They’ve done an interesting angle with Diaz. Rather than show off his crazy side, they’re showing off a sensitive, uncertain side of him. He’s almost child-like. Condit comes off as way too regular kind of guy to be in a main event. The problem isn’t if he loses since Diaz is the star. It’s if he wins.

Cesar Gracie says that Nick Diaz wants to close the doors, rather than open the doors to things like the media. He says that the fight starts once you sign the contract and he doesn’t want to make nice with his opponent when he’s been training to fight him the entire time.

Carlos Condit is a first time father and he says that it’s not the easiest to go out and train as hard as you can every day when you know you have responsibilities at home with your family, but it inspires him.

Greg Jackson said that he thinks Carlos got into MMA like others do, because they have a need to do something with their energy. His father said that the mischief and negativity he had as a kid became a sharpness after he started in MMA.

Condit says that Diaz has holes in the game and he makes up for it by being so tough.

Diaz bikes 20 miles, spars for six rounds, and swims laps all in one day and the narrator says the day ends after midnight. Insane. His second grade teacher says that he’s the exact same as he was in the second grade. He doesn’t make eye contact and he speaks deliberately. Diaz says he never fit in anywhere. He said high school was hard times.

Bottom line: While it was nearly all Carlos Condit, the only interesting parts of the show were when Diaz was on screen. It was almost uncomfortable watching him. They started to delve into Condit’s background, which could be interesting, but his key story was that he’s a first time dad and it’s hard to train and be a dad. Ya, not too interesting.

This is the final Wednesday show of the season. And I would say that I’m happy the end is near as this wasn’t a terrible season, but even worse, it was just boring. The fights weren’t even all that good. And away, we go.

Tony apologizes and uses the excuse of blacking out, which is sort of like saying he got Twitter hacked.

These must be some long fights because they’re already getting to it.

Chris Cope vs. Ramsey Nijem
Ramsey is quick and aggressive. He immediately charged in and was overwhelming Cope with punches. He stayed on him and pushed him up against the cage. Ramsey just looks better than him at every stage of the game right now.

Ramsey just cracked Cope and wouldn’t stop moving forward. Cope was just overwhelmed and couldn’t take any more of the shots and went down. He might’ve taken some shots to the back of the head. But the ref stopped it ad Ramsey is in the final.

Winner: Ramsey Nijem by way of 2nd round TKO

Tony Ferguson vs. Chuck O’Neil
The first round was all leg kicks and counter punches from Chuck and head movement, lunging hooks, and leg kicks for Tony. Chuck is feeling Tony’s power and Tony’s not all that taken aback by Chuck’s combinations, which he is landing, but he’s not backing him up at all.

The round was more of the same. Tony was supremely confident that Chuck couldn’t hurt him and bloodied Chuck’s nose. Chuck did a good job of sticking a moving and scoring points, but I’m not sure you can give him either round.

Ramsey continued to overwhelm Chuck and stopped him. Chuck can probably move down a weight class as Tony was way too strong for him. Tony set up his strikes perfectly with leg kicks all fight and Chuck was in bad shape. He went down basically from a body shot because he couldn’t stand anymore.

Winner: Tony Ferguson by way of 3rd round TKO

The fight between Tony and Ramsey should actually be really good. The two most impressive guys made it.

After the show, Dana talks about Brock Lesnar’s illness and having to replace him with Shane Carwin.

Phil Nurse flies in from New York to watch GSP’s muay thai. He says when it comes down to technique, stand-up, will, and even jiu-jitsu, GSP has the advantage.

In the last week until the fight, Shields brings Phil Davis back to train with him. Davis says usually, when he gets someone down on the ground, he’s on top, but with Jake, when he gets him down, it’s like losing because Jake is immediately on top. Shields doesn’t seem all that confident. He says he’s had a pretty good training camp and he’s in pretty good shape. That doesn’t sound like a ton of confidence.

They show Shields’ daughter, which is the other side of fighters that I enjoy seeing on shows like this. They’re not machines. They have families. Their families are part of the sacrifice. He says he’s ready to take the belt home.

GSP thinks that the media isn’t giving Shields enough respect and that he can see it as a trap for him.

Shields and Gilbert Melendez reminisce about their start and fighting for little money and in front of small crowds.

The episode itself was way too light and they really need to reconsider their reasoning behind putting these things together. When you don’t have a ton of interesting footage, you get this episode. However, I like the goal of this episode which was to make these guys human while also showing how bad ass they are in the octagon. It’s a tough line because you don’t want to show too much training (like the first two episodes), while showing too much of their human side doesn’t make them look like superstars. They found that line for this last episode, but they didn’t have enough good footage to pull it off.

Primetime did nothing in the ratings and wasn’t a good show for the first episode. I hope this week’s is much better, rather than a robotic training session for two sound guys, which is what the first episode was.

Shields’ boxing is so mechanical. The strength is there, but there’s no fluidity. Shields’ camp is trying to sell the idea that if GSP takes the fight to the ground, he’ll get subbed. But they showed Jake on top the entire time.

The training footage is great, but there needs to be more dimensions to Jake Shields than that he trains hard.

GSP says that gymnasts are the best athletes in the world and he’s shown on the rings. He says it helps him with his coordination and dexterity. He wants to be a great athlete. With Howard Grant as his boxing coach, GSP’s hands look fast and his technique looks much more fluid, but he doesn’t seem to hit as hard as Shields does.

GSP continuously puts over Shields as a dangerous man even to the point of saying he’s scared as hell.

Gilbert Melendez, Jake Shields, and Nick Diaz are either the three amigos or the three stooges.

Jake’s dad and his high school wrestling coach are talking up Jake’s wrestling skill. Jake’s dad says that he always told him that it’s better to lose to someone better than you than to beat someone easy.

GSP is doing sprint training with the idea of blowing up his heart rate and recovering and going again, getting his heart rate down as quickly as possible.

What if GSP tapped out Shields? Or what if Shields outwrestled Georges? Eh, I’m just trying to think about something other than training, which is what this ENTIRE SHOW IS ABOUT!

The one thing Shields can play is the respect card, since most don’t think he can beat GSP. But it’s the same card that Dan Hardy and Josh Koscheck played and it didn’t work out. However, Shields is better than Hardy and bigger than Koscheck.

Well, if you love watching training, that’s what you got. If you like learning about fighters as people, you didn’t get it for the second week in a row. Hopefully they save the best for next week.