(Don’t fart…don’t fart…don’t fart…don’t fart…)

Well here’s a bit of good news for once.

If you’re like us, you’re probably sick to death of watching interim champions all but refuse to defend their titles while the actual champions remain on the shelf. So when Renan Barao’s camp announced that he would be taking the Carlos Condit approach to the interim title, we here at the CP offices let out a collective groan before pouring another round of Johnnie Walker Blue Label on the rocks — also known as our HR department — and prepared for a long winter of semi-meaningful-but-not-really bantamweight fights. Thankfully, Dana White is a Johnnie Walker man, and after he smashed a bottle of it over Danga’s head, we managed to come to an agreement regarding the UFC’s last remaining interim champ.

White recently told MMAWeekly that Barao will likely be defending his belt before champion Dominick Cruz is back in action, and his potential opponent should come as a surprise to no one.

If you ever wanted to tie things up, Matt Hughes, now is the time.

The UFC’s Welterweight division has been going nowhere fast for quite some time now. In the time since champ Georges St. Pierre was sidelined with an injury and lengthy recovery, we’ve controversially crowned a interim king who’d prefer to sit and wait for the champion to reemerge rather than fight the rest of the weight class’s top contenders, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what an interim champ is supposed to do.

Now, finally, it looks like frustrated fans have some good news: Carlos Condit has a date with “Rush” marked on his calendar. The bad news? It’s written in pencil and we still have to wait five months to see it.

As reported by Sherdog.com, UFC 154, slated to go down on November 17th in Montreal, will feature the ‘unification’ of the two Welterweight straps. St. Pierre last defended his title against Jake Shields at UFC 129 in April of 2011. Assuming that Georges recovers in time for this scrap, will nineteen months of ring rust make for an even more conservative performance from the champ?

After the jump, Hendricks and Kampmann will vie for a title shot on the undercard.

By Elias Cepeda

(“I am not im-pressed wit my lack of title de-fense.”)

It’s time to strip Georges St. Pierre of his UFC welterweight championship.

Ok, perhaps not at this very moment, but come May 1, it will have been over a year since the UFC champ has defended his 170lb strap. St. Pierre hasn’t run from challenges or fights, he’s just had several consecutive knee injuries (the most recent one, a torn ACL that required surgery to repair) that have forced him to pull out of scheduled belt defenses.

Carlos Condit just won a razor-thin interim title bout against Nick Diaz at UFC 143, but would have to wait until the new year is almost over before being able to fight GSP. The Canadian says he won’t be ready to fight again until November. Unfortunately, we’ve seen these situations in the UFC before and a standard has emerged of champions needing to defend their titles at least once a year. In 2004, UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir was in a motorcycle accident that put him on the shelf. Initially, when it was unknown if and when he would return, an interim title was created and was won by Andrei Arlovski. When it was clear that Mir would go longer than a year without defending his belt, the interim champ was made the “full” champ. It wasn’t about punishing Mir, it was simply about letting the division continue, with significant matchups made and fights promoted well.

Even GSP seems to agree that he shouldn’t be considered the UFC champion while going so long without defending the gold. “The way I see it, I am not the champion anymore on Saturday night. I have not fought since April, against my will, but I understand the champion must fight. You have to put the belt on the line in order to call yourself champion, the best in the world. Right now I am not the best in the world, I am injured,” he told UFC.com shortly before UFC 143.