With a lightweight title fight between Nick Diaz and Eddie Alvarez confirmed for November 8, where does that leave recently stripped champion, KJ Noons?
According to a Sherdog.com interview with Noons it means he now has complete freedom:
"I'm a free agent. Since I’ve been stripped, I’m no longer the champion and I don’t owe them the fights. I owed them fights for being a champion."
Not so fast ... Elite XC officials disagree. Here are thoughts from the company's Head of Fight Operations, Jeremy Lappen:
"KJ still has two more fights on his contract. I’m hoping we’ll work something out, but there’s really not much to work out. He’s still under contract with us."
This is just more disagreeing to add to months of back and forth between the mixed martial arts promotion and its former champion. Everything stemmed from Noons not wanting to grant Nick Diaz a rematch and another shot at his belt because he didn't feel the Cesar Gracie black belt was the top contender.
Noons' opinion was that 2008 DREAM Lightweight Grand Prix stud Eddie Alvarez had earned the top spot with his impressive tournament run. Apparently Elite XC didn't fully disagree with that opinion either since Alvarez is now facing off against Diaz for the vacant strap.
It's obvious the company wanted to squeeze everything it could out of the Noons and Diaz feud, but they promotion also clearly didn't like the idea of of having its champion making the match making decisions so he was stripped of his 160-pound belt.
For now Noons is content on going back to boxing. In fact, he has a scheduled bout against Alejandro Bogarin (8-6-3) on November 13 in El Monte, California. Noons sports a solid professional boxing record (7-1 with 5 knockouts).
Regardless, that doesn't mean Noons' mixed martial arts career is over. Believe it or not he's still on semi-good terms with Elite XC, and he's even talked about facing the winner of Diaz and Alvarez sometime in the future.
Here's a snip:
"We’re still on good terms. We’re gonna see if we can work a deal out, but as of right now, we are on the same page as I’m going to go box right now. Hopefully they’ll want to bring me back in the future and they can have Eddie or Nick or whoever they have in the future fight the real champ."
This is just a weird situation that doesn't seem to have an end in sight. The saga continues.
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