After his latest performance in the cage, Nick Diaz has left little doubt that he is among the best welterweight fighters in the world. The Stockton native remains to be the only person to have finished striking ace Paul Daley at his own game, dismantling the Brit with a first-round TKO last Saturday. The win helped extend a 10-fight win streak for Diaz which dates back to a controversial loss due to cuts when he fought KJ Noons back in the EliteXC days in 2007, though Nick has since avenged the loss by dominating Noons en route to a decision victory last October. Now on the heels of his third title defense, Diaz has already fought three-times in the last six-months, and though he has looked ultra-impressive, head trainer Cesar Gracie believes that the best is yet to come. Time to give the champ a break. ...

Try as I might, I just can’t stop posting about Jason Miller. The man known as “Mayhem” and the host of the popular MTV reality TV show “Bully Beatdown” has been on a tireless crusade to chase down a catchweight bout with current Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz for what feels like forever now. In that time, Miller has launched several verbal attacks in countless interviews, and even started up the website www.dontbescaredhomie.com so fans could keep up-to-date on his latest rants. Recently, Miller fired another missile at Diaz, but this time, he even went as far as to call out Diaz’s entire team, his head trainer, and even his hometown. ...

As the year is coming closer to an end, the now annual World MMA Awards, which is hosted by Fighters Only Magazine, has recently announced their finalists for the December 1st event, which will take place once again in Las Vegas, Nev., which has become a hot bed for all things fighting related. The 2009 event opened up to a large audience, and has become a propellant in the mixed martial arts world, opening up the eyes to a mainstream audience, by the community taking leaps and bounds in order to legitimize itself as not only a legitimate sport, but one that deserves that same sort of recognition that most others receive, here in these United States. ...

Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker told MMA Junkie, "I can tell you this: If Cesar Gracie says to me, 'Jose's training with me, I'm going to get him ready, and I'm going to do it in four or five months,' and Cesar's telling me this? That will have a lot of weight on what we decide [about Canseco fighting for Strikeforce.]" ...

In an interview with MMA Weekly Radio, Fighters.com second-ranked middleweight and Strikeforce champion Jake Shields (24-4-1) called former baseball all-star turned fighter Jose Canseco (0-1) "kind of a scumbag". ...