(‘I’m fighting who, now? You sure?’)

Remember when Nick Diaz and KJ Noons (along with KJ Noons’ dad) got into it after the last Elite XC event in Hawaii and it all seemed like a staged confrontation designed to build up a rematch between them for the July 26 show on CBS? And then remember how Elite XC announced that the event would be in Stockton, Ca., Diaz’s hometown, but instead of Noons, Diaz would be fighting Thomas “Wildman” Denny? Remember how weird and completely counter-intuitive that seemed?

Yeah, well, apparently Denny couldn’t believe it either. As he told MMA Rated, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense:

I was really surprised. I kinda think everybody agreed with that, you know the little thing that happened, the little eruption afterwards or whatever. Nick is a showman. I don’t know if you know; he means it all the time. But he comes off as kind of a jackass and a lot of people don’t think he has a lot of class in the sport, and that little eruption that happened afterwards and flipping people off and whatever, I thought, “Man, yeah, they’ll definitely book that”. But I guess Noons wants some time off and wants to take the fight serious, where Nick wants to fight as much as he can.

Good work, Elite XC. Even your fighters are baffled by your decisions.

Denny is doing his part to turn up the heat in advance of his bout with Diaz though, and he didn’t stop at calling Diaz “kind of a jackass.” No, he’s just getting started.

On Diaz’s behavior:
You know what? It’s definitely too much. It’s over the top. Like I said, it’s no class. The thing is we’re trying to build this sport, and this sport is getting so big and, I’ll tell you what, I got a lot of kids that are fans of mine and I would be pretty bummed out if some of my fans came up to me and they asked me, “Hey, Thomas, why are you flipping dudes off?” And that’s kinda giving them that thing where they can flip people off and, “hey, it’s cool to flip people off.”

On his feud with Diaz:
He talks a lot of trash about me and however he perceives me with painting my fingernails and doing my hair and stuff like that. You know, he’s a pretty shallow person because he doesn’t even really realize what that is. That’s something from my family that’s given to me and that’s my kids being a part of my fighting tradition, and he can look at me as being a fag or whatever he wants but when I’m punching him in the face he’ll think a little differently.

Not bad. Now all we need is for a member of Denny’s family to go after Diaz on live TV and we’ll be all set. Better saddle up, Stockton.