For those of you who don’t know, Jay Hieron was screwed. Actually, Jay Hieron has been screwed on several occasions in 2009. You’ve all heard the story of how Jay Hieron said ‘He has a lot of bills to pay and no paycheck‘ after the Affliction aftermath. You also know how he was signed to fight Nick Diaz on the Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg card then Diaz dropped out so the bout was in limbo. Jesse Taylor was found as a replacement and now what was promised to be a welterweight title fight for Hieron was relegated to just a normal three-round bout. During the weigh-ins, Jesse Taylor came overweight so the fight was thrown into that ‘limbo’ category again. Dude finally made weight later that day but Hieron discovered that his match was demoted to an undercard bout. Hieron wasn’t even on the Showtime broadcast and all of his sponsorship money was stripped away. On December 18th, MMAWeekly reported that Marius ‘The Whitemare’ Zaromskis will face Nick Diaz for the vacant Strikeforce welterweight title. That morning, we called up Jay Hieron to get his reaction. He was caught off guard and just told us that he would get back to us after he confirmed the news with Strikeforce. Weeks later, Jay Hieron finally got back to us so we had to pose the most blatantly obvious question imaginable: ‘What the [expletive] happened to your title shot?‘. Hieron told us that Nick Diaz just refuses to fight him.
Diaz doesn’t want to fight me, that’s what happened.
My ideal scenario would be me fighting for the title shot, fighting Diaz. That’s not happening so it’s water under the bridge for me now. I got someone else to look forward to, I’m fighting Joe Riggs on the 30th. So that’s who I’m looking forward to now, after that I’ll figure out who’s next but for right now my main focus is Joe Riggs.
Since Nick Diaz doesn’t want to fight Jay Hieron, we asked him who would win between Marius Zaromskis and Nick Diaz. Hieron told us even though he thinks Diaz is ducking him, he still respects him and thinks he would easily grab the W at Strikeforce: Miami.
I know Zaromksis has a good headkick and I really haven’t seen anything else from him so we’ll see on that night what he’s all about. I respect the guy (Diaz) as a fighter and I think he’s more well-rounded than Zaromskis.
Alright, so we sort of felt like d**ks by repeatedly bringing up one of the low points of his MMA career so we changed the topic. We asked Hieron about his Jan 30th opponent, Joe ‘Diesel’ Riggs.
I’m going to do what I do best. I’m going to go to work. I got a good opponent in front of me, Joe Riggs and then we’ll see what’s next after that.
I hope he’s in great shape, I hope he comes with his A-game because that’s what I’m coming with and it’s going to be a great fight. Put on a show for the fans and have fun doing it.
It’s not the Diaz vs. Hieron fight we were all promised months ago. It’s the battle of the two guys who were supposed to fight Nick Diaz at Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg. In a perfect universe, the winner of Riggs vs. Hieron would be next in line for a title shot…but in a perfect universe, Hieron would have already fought for the belt in August.
