Sherdog’s Top 10: Fights That Failed to Live Up to Their Hype

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8. Georges St. Pierre vs. Nick Diaz

“They’re selling you all wolf tickets, people, and you’re eating them right up. Georges here, he’s selling you wolf tickets. Dana’s here selling you wolf tickets; the UFC’s selling you wolf tickets; and you’re eating them right up.”

The UFC was keen to hype St. Pierre’s long-awaited matchup with Diaz as a legitimate grudge match at UFC 158 on March 16, 2013. Sure, Diaz had dropped his last bout to Carlos Condit and been forced to sit out for a year after testing positive for marijuana, but the fight was supposed to be a gift to the promotion’s long-reigning, long-suffering welterweight champion in return for having borne the brunt of the Stockton, Calif., mauler’s taunts and barbs over the previous two years. This was a fight GSP wanted. It had driven him to “a dark place,” as he put it, and the promotion assured us that he would show up ready to drop bombs on the outspoken challenger. Diaz, however, had no interest in playing into that narrative, and in fact did his best to puncture the storyline. This was not a grudge match, Diaz claimed, but a cheap attempt to convince the fans that there was legitimate animosity on both sides.

The fight itself played out almost exactly as most observers thought it would, with GSP taking Diaz to the mat repeatedly, beating him up from inside the guard and from the top-ride and keeping the fight in the center of the cage to avoid Diaz’s pressure game and long head-body combinations against the fence. The California native had his moments, but it was never terribly competitive. GSP walked away with the belt, and the heat the promotion had managed to generate in the lead-up to the bout dissipated with a whimper.

Number 7 » The stage was set for one of the biggest rematches in the sport’s history to that point at UFC 46 on Jan. 31, 20014. The fight itself was a complete letdown.