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How fast do things change in the UFC’s lightweight division? As quickly as the weather changes in Colorado.

Since Frankie Edgar became the champion nearly two years ago, the road to the title has been a course of trip wires, booby hatches and rabbit holes. People have a tendency to disappear as fast as they show up in the title picture.

Former WEC titlist Anthony Pettis is one who knows all about it. He was next in line a year ago after crossing into the UFC. Then he wasn’t. Now he is again.

At least -- possibly.

And the same goes for Joe Lauzon, who is Pettis’ opponent at UFC 144 this weekend in Saitama, Japan. Lauzon might be the unlikeliest of title contenders we’ve seen since Dan Hardy’s meteoric flash through the welterweights.

Difference being, Lauzon -- a former IT guy -- has been hovering in the gray middle of the division ever since knocking out Jens Pulver at UFC 63. That was five and a half years ago. Lauzon is the quietest contender to have ever been so long in the making.

Yet there he is. For once in his career, Lauzon is in focus in the title picture. If he beats Pettis, that would be a truly compelling argument for his cause -- especially after Lauzon's defeat of Melvin Guillard. Remember that, as of October, Guillard was right there at the top of the division too -- as the most feared striker in the 155-pound division riding a five-fight winning streak. That night, Lauzon proved fighting acumen overcomes brute strength. Couple that with a win over a far more well-rounded Anthony Pettis, and Lauzon becomes hard to ignore.

What’s strange is that Lauzon has never exactly been about title contention (though he is happy to find himself in it). When I spoke to him after he submitted Guillard at UFC 136, he said he was happy to be in the $18,000/$18,000 range, rather than a higher pay bracket of, say, $30,000/$30,000.

Why? Two reasons.

One, Lauzon is a smart long-term planner who has earned seven end-of-the-night bonuses. He estimates he’s made $365,000 in bonus money in his career so far. Not shabby. And part of how he did that plays into the second reason: On the lower scale pay bracket, he gets the occasional Curt Warburton. He has never lost two in a row in the UFC, and if you look at his opponents after a loss, you’ll get an idea why. After losing to Kenny Florian, he fought Kyle Bradley -- a significant dip in quality of opposition. After dropping a tough bout with Sam Stout, Lauzon drew Gabe Ruediger -- in Lauzon's hometown of Boston. After George Sotiropoulos tapped him with a Kimura, he got Warburton.

If he’s in a higher pay bracket, he gets monsters. Every time. And he is well aware of the fact.

Yet a head of steam is a head of steam. Should Lauzon beat Pettis, he will be the forerunner for a shot at the title with three wins in a row. The only hitch might be if the UFC decides to wait on Nate Diaz/Jim Miller in May. Diaz is coming off a victory over a top-ranked Donald Cerrone, while Miller piled on Guillard after dropping a fight to Benson Henderson. Arguably, the winner of that fight has a pretty righteous claim to a title shot, too. Both the Diaz and Miller camps are prepping for the UFC on FOX 3 card as if it’s a title eliminator. As well they should.

But everybody knows matchmaking is half about schedule alignments, and that’s why the winner of Lauzon/Pettis has a trump card: timing. They fight on the same card as Edgar/Henderson, meaning meshing schedules could play a factor. Diaz/Miller is more than two months off. People who follow the fight game want immediacy. If the Pettis/Lauzon fight ends emphatically either way, there’s a good chance that the winner looks like the top contender.

If it’s Lauzon? That makes for a fun case. Here would be a guy we never saw coming -- yet who was always there.

In that way, his rise in the ranks would feel just as stealthy as his jiu-jitsu.

Josh Koscheck invites you to hate him. Why? Because he was one of the earliest subscribers to the “as long as you care” camp. If you can’t stand him, that’s like saying you won’t miss the chance to see him get his head smashed in. That’s like saying you love him.

But something about Koscheck’s heel mode has never seemed right. When he was calling Chris Leben a “fatherless bastard” on the first season of the “Ultimate Fighter,” he just came off like your ordinary punk. By the time he was coaching opposite Georges St. Pierre on the show 11 seasons later, his demeanor had only been tweaked by success -- it was cockiness with actual backing. This version, the entrepreneurial one, had a Ferrari in his garage in Fresno; the first version had just a few trophies from his collegiate wrestling days at Edinboro University.

Does any of this make for a heel? Definitely annoying, maybe shallow. If we’re talking heels heels, Koscheck is certainly well heeled and open about it. Koscheck has always been hard to know aside from his materialistic desires. Even his close friends, the ones who know the “real” Koscheck, are generally business people where real is often interdistinguishable from the alternative.

But think about that, anyway -- if only specific VIPs know the other side of Koscheck, and it’s a circle that’s so tight and protected from commoners as to become elitist, doesn’t that amount to the same thing?

It’s a strange place to have to go in search of a genuine center. But that’s Koscheck -- or as much of him as we can glean.

Yet heel or not, he’s once again making his way back up the welterweight rungs as a sort of man without a country. He lost his title bid to Georges St. Pierre in December 2010, effectively turning him into the Rich Franklin of the welterweight division. As he recovered from broken orbital bones suffered in the St. Pierre bout, his options were limited to this: migrate or guard the gate. By the time Koscheck resurfaced to fight Matt Hughes nine months later, he was talking about exclusive “big fights” or a possible run in the middleweight division. This was Franklin all over again (only, you know, he was threatening to sue Stephan Bonnar).

Then things changed.

With St. Pierre’s knee injury, the introduction of an interim belt, and a victory over Mike Pierce at UFC 143, Koscheck appears to be neither gatekeeper nor division-hopper. Instead he appears again as a contender. And just like that he will fight Johny Hendricks in May in a bout with significant ties to another title shot.

In this way, Dan Hardy might have touched on more than he knew when he said that Koscheck was an “unflushable.” Think the idea of Koscheck/St. Pierre III isn’t exciting? Kos couldn't care less of what you think. He even went so far as to say he hoped St. Pierre would never fully recover from knee surgery. If you can’t beat them, hope for divine intervention.

But here’s where things get different -- this time, as Koscheck makes his way back, he’ll do it as a lone wolf. He revealed after the Pierce fight that he was no longer training at his long-time hub in San Jose, Calif., the American Kickboxing Academy -- that he was now a full-time member of himself in Fresno. Though this feels like the way it should be, AKA has always been the sweet side of Koscheck’s loyalties. This was what kept him from looking like a bounty hunter with peroxide curls -- training partners Jon Fitch and Mike Swick were his brothers. They were part of his “inner-circle,” part of the Zinkin bond.

Now they are separate. And even though they're no longer gymmates, Koscheck still contends that he’d sooner retire than fight Fitch. A little mystery toward the deeper chords of brotherhood? Maybe. But if you listen to what Koscheck has been saying for the last couple of years -- all this braggadocio stuff about being a “gold-digger, baby” -- you’d have to wonder if loyalties would tend toward Fitch or Benjamin Franklin if presented.

Perhaps then we’ll know if he’s a true heel or a man of very strict guns and principles. Because right now he’s a prolific fighter who we love to hate, yet who’s smart enough to know exactly how reversible that phrase is.

And the strange thing is, at 34 years old and entering his 20th UFC fight since 2005, Koscheck might finally be coming into Koscheck. Here’s a guy who left AKA to go the course alone, who is inviting New Jersey to make like Montreal and give him full-throttle hate, and who, despite it all, is a win away from perhaps forcing a fight on the public that virtually nobody other than he himself wants. Well, you know who he caters to, and it isn’t the public.

Only it sort of is. By daring you to hate him, he’s ensuring that you at least care. And that’s a pretty calculated heel if there’s ever been one.

Georges St. Pierre is actively rooting for Nick Diaz to win versus his erstwhile training partner Carlos Condit this weekend at UFC 143.

Why? Because, when he returns from his knee injury, he wants to beat Diaz to a pulp himself and maybe teach him some manners along the way. Simply watching somebody else beat up Diaz isn’t going to cut it -- St. Pierre wants to lay hands on the man who essentially called him a coward. There’s just no satisfaction in doing this thing vicariously.

And as St. Pierre rehabs in California, this becomes his raison d’être -- to drag Diaz from the back alleys of Stockton, and blow him up large and in public under a thousand high-watt bulbs. It just so happens that he’s plotting Diaz’s comeuppance with boom mics hovering over his head.

All of this is, of course, a little bizarre.

Most diplomatic competitors pretend to have no rooting interest in a game/fight that leads directly to them. Any admission of wanting to play/fight a lesser opponent is a sign of disrespect or some overarching insecurity. Any preferential treatment the other way looks like chest puffing.

But as everybody knows, the fight game is always that much more literal and that much more uninhibited. Guys do not follow protocol, they’re not nearly as censored and most have only the vaguest idea of consequences. Maybe it’s because there are no metaphors in play. It is literally man against man, and the loudest man need only back it up.

The novelty is that it’s coming from Georges St. Pierre. That’s GSP, the Hobey Baker of MMA, who once said Dan Hardy would be the toughest challenge of his career (and believed large portions of what he was saying). If there’s ever been a gentler gladiator outside the cage than St. Pierre, I’d like to know who he is.

Yet in the most recent "UFC Primetime," the producers smartly yanked the plug on the Condit/Diaz spotlight to have the usually reserved St. Pierre weigh in on matters. In it, the French-Canadian did not speak in automaton clichés (as he sometimes does) or work rote phrases (such as, “I just want to the best Georges St. Pierre I can be”). This time, over a montage of him doing specialized training on the road back from knee surgery, he said he was hoping and praying that Diaz beats Condit. His dander is still way up, and he looms over Las Vegas this weekend like a storm cloud.

Which is fitting, because St. Pierre also talked about a dark place inside himself that Diaz couldn’t possibly fathom. This was the true revelation. The points were a little loose, but St. Pierre seemed to be saying that Diaz can outcrazy him, but not outblack his moods.

Somehow, in the exchange of Diaz not showing up at news conferences, getting plucked from the title shot and then disrespecting St. Pierre publicly after beating B.J. Penn at UFC 137, lasting impressions were made. In fact, the last insult made St. Pierre’s pupils turn black, and this is a version of St. Pierre that becomes fascinating.

Move over, Garth Marenghi, we’re about to visit Georges St. Pierre’s “Dark Place,” a place the media has never been able to get at. For once, the inner-workings of the usually stubborn professional are burbling up to the surface. And that counts as a new wrinkle.

It also makes the interim welterweight title fight between Condit and Diaz that much more fun, and it definitely makes GSP’s rooting interest the general rooting interest. Who doesn’t want to see Diaz-St. Pierre now? Who doesn’t want to see St. Pierre fighting with a grudge, against a guy who doesn’t give a damn about no feelings?

Now, with the UFC on Fox 2 playing out as the gateway to vastly riveting matchups between Chael Sonnen/Anderson Silva and Rashad Evans/Jon Jones, there’s this weekend, which joins right in. A supercharged, totally peeved St. Pierre is expediting his return because he wants to smash Diaz into a million afterthoughts as soon as possible. It’s another gateway fight that sets up a trilogy of ax-grinding title bouts for mid-2012.

And it’s a hard spot for Condit. Lose, and make everybody happy. Win, and snap St. Pierre back into the ordinary light.

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Las Vegas -- It doesn’t look easy, but Dominick Cruz can still hold a pen.

Fresh off surgery on the right hand he injured during his bantamweight title defense over Demetrious Johnson earlier this month, Cruz is on the mend but still ailing. These days, he’s doling out a lot of left-handed handshakes, a lot of left-handed fist-bumps. When he writes his name he’s forced to improvise a bit, using a grip with his swollen and discolored right that probably wouldn’t win him any penmanship competitions but still gets the job done.

Cruz says it could be anywhere from four to 10 weeks before he’s able to punch something again, but the Tucson, Ariz., native now fighting out of San Diego is doing whatever he can to stay active. That means a lot of cardio, rehab and twice-weekly physical therapy sessions that he hopes will speed up the recovery process.

It also means that when Cruz finds himself in Las Vegas for this weekend’s UFC 137, he jumps at the chance to attend an out-of-the-way event on Wednesday night, where he and welterweight Dan Hardy sign autographs and take pictures with a little more than a hundred local kids and their chaperones at an area Boys and Girls Club.

He does it because while he himself is down at out, Cruz says he wants to do what he can to give back.

“I think this is really important,” Cruz says. “Right now, I’m coming off an injury, so rather than being at home, why not come out and help out with the kids and the community? Everybody else works 24/7 and as a fighter, why should I be any different? So this is just a different line of work for me, a way to help the community and a way to do something while I’m on injured reserve.”

Few of the fans who attend Saturday night’s fight card at Mandalay Bay will venture far enough off the strip to find the Lied Memorial Boys and Girls Club on Vegas’ West side. It’s a well-hidden, but fairly sprawling facility with gyms and pool tables and a baseball diamond. Volunteers there say the complex gives neighborhood kids a place to go and something to do whenever they need one.

According to organizers, Wednesday’s “Boys Night Out” event is one of its biggest of the year, where boys who might not otherwise have many positive role models in their lives are paired with local mentors for an evening of special activities. In the spring, they’ll do something similar for girls, though tonight has a pretty male-centric vibe.

The SWAT team is here -- complete with a bomb-disarming robot for the kids to inspect -- as is a fire truck and a lineup of hot rods and racecars all parked around the baseball diamond's infield. There are areas for football tossing and soccer dribbling and something called a “sponge race,” even if a surprisingly blustery fall evening seems a bit cold for that.

There are also the two UFC fighters, who many of the kids are admittedly becoming familiar with for the first time. Some of the older guys, the mentors -- who fit more neatly into the fight company’s targeted 18-34 year-old male demographic -- are the ones who seem more excited to see them at first. Once the word gets out about who Cruz and Hardy are and what they do though, the kids come in droves.

For Cruz, it reminds him a little bit of his own childhood, when he says he spent a lot of afternoons playing basketball at a local Salvation Army after school.

“I never really got to meet a whole lot of pro athletes growing up out there in Tucson ...,” he says. “I look at these kids and I remember when I was their age, just running around and how stoked I would have been to see any pro athlete. I would have been in heaven. I try to put myself in their shoes when I come to events like this and just be here for them.”

One such youngster sidles up to Cruz midway through the autograph session and timidly asks him for a picture. Before the kid knows what hit him, Cruz pulls him in, throws an arm (his left one, naturally) over his shoulder and smiles for the camera. The kid stands there nearly paralyzed with surprise and awe at the moment.

Afterward, Cruz signs a photo for him and the kid wanders off, dazed, maybe a little confused and grinning ear-to-ear. A minute ago, he may not have known who Dominick Cruz was. Now, he might never forget him.

“It’s a good feeling when you see people get hyped up,” Cruz says. “Sometimes you forget that you can make somebody’s day.”

Las Vegas -- By now, pretty much everybody knows the Dan Hardy story.

The guy basically comes out of nowhere, breaks into the UFC in late 2008 and racks up four wins in 13 months. He takes a title shot against Georges St. Pierre, gets dominated, as many believed he would. That loss turns into a four-fight losing streak, during which he looks downright awful. At this point, he’s still got a job with the UFC, but just barely. Where might one find Dan Hardy? Check the gutter.

That’s the story in a nutshell and Hardy himself will tell you that’s the gist of it. But to hear the 29-year-old tell it, it’s a little more in depth than what’s on the surface. This wasn’t a simple case of a short-on-talent, one-hit wonder.

When asked to sum up his journey in mixed martial arts, Hardy has a lot to say.

“The thing is, when I got to the UFC it was like, ‘Wow. I made it,’” Hardy told ESPN.com. “Those first four fights, I just went in and fought. Whatever happens, happens. I didn’t feel like there was a great deal of pressure on me.

“Then the [Mike] Swick fight threw me into a title picture a lot sooner than I had anticipated. There were lots of pressures that came with that and they took the enjoyment out of fighting. I was the first Brit to get a title shot. I only had four fights in the UFC and no one thought I deserved a title shot. That was a lot of pressure.

Though things seemed to be coming together on the outside, internally things weren't so smooth.

“I had a new Thai boxing coach," Hardy said. "I had no jiu-jitsu coach because I had gotten in a disagreement with him. I lost my grandfather during that camp, which I’ve never really got back together from. The last four weeks before the fight, I had cameras following me 24 hours a day.

“I went in there, basically hoping to show I didn’t have any quit in me. After the fight I was like, ‘That really couldn’t have gone any better.’ If I had knocked him out, they would have said it was a lucky punch. But the fact I got my a-- kicked for 25 minutes and survived, people said, ‘Well, he’s not on the same level technically, but he’s game.’

While the outcome couldn't have been better for Hardy, what proceeded afterward weren't exactly ideal.

“After that, my ego swelled. Because I performed better in that fight than people thought, I got respect from the fans. All of a sudden everyone wants to know what you’re doing because you’ve got a colorful Mohawk and a British accent. It was exhausting. I couldn’t focus on being a better mixed martial artist. I had to focus on being the guy everyone wanted me to be.”

The reality is, Hardy wasn’t ready to fight St. Pierre for the title. His game had holes. He was bouncing between coaches, almost regularly, because of a lack of resources. While St. Pierre could invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into training, Hardy’s cornermen consisted of a Thai coach with no MMA background, a brown belt jiu-jitsu student under Eddie Bravo who Hardy flew out because he was a friend, and a strength and conditioning coach.

“I was working with what was available to me,” Hardy said. “I was chatting with GSP’s coaches [during a recent trip to Montreal], and they said, ‘We watched that fight back and were listening to your coaches. You were on your own in there.’ That was how it was the whole training camp. They did their best, but they weren’t able to give me what I needed.”

Eight fights into his UFC career, Hardy is finally starting to train like a professional.

He’s put his faith in Las Vegas-based boxing coach Jimmy Gifford and puts in work at Robert Drysdale’s jiu-jitsu academy three days a week. He’s also employed UFC heavyweight Roy Nelson as his “ground coach,” primarily to improve his wrestling.

And, for the first time in his career, he’s turning down fights. Hardy has declined multiple opportunities to fight already, including a very tempting offer to fight Matt Brown at UFC 138 in Birmingham, England.

Hardy says passing on fights has been difficult, but he needs time if he’s serious about turning his career around. He became so unraveled in the past two years, he barely recognizes himself when he watches film of the Chris Lytle loss.

“As much fun as that fight was, it was an awful performance,” he said. “Chris is not the most technical striker. If I had fought him three years ago in a kickboxing match, I don’t think he could have hit me.

“But I was learning from two different striking coaches at the time, with two very different styles. As a result, I went in there just throwing punches with no real regard for any kind of technique. I am a smart fighter, but when I get in there I just want to bang. I don’t know why. But I’m feeling like I’ve come out the other side now.”

Hardy admits he very nearly called it a career after suffering a humiliating loss to Anthony Johnson at UFC Fight Night 24 in March.

After retreating to his locker room following that co-main event fight, he told his team members, which included Nelson, he was finished. He wasn’t enjoying himself anymore and wasn’t sure how to get back to that.

Of course, he eventually snapped out of that night’s disappointment, but his mindset still wasn’t where it's at today. As cliché as it sounds, Hardy is starting to believe in himself once again in Las Vegas. And the guy who made it to a title shot on basically raw talent alone, is finally starting to evolve.

“I think Dan Hardy needed somebody to give him a hug,” Gifford said. “He can fight. He belongs here. Let’s slow some stuff down and train. I asked him, ‘When have you ever trained?’ He’s sparred and hit mitts, but has he ever really learned? Nobody has really spent time with him.

“The good news is he works. The rumor was he didn’t put the time in. No. Nobody put the time in on Dan Hardy. This is a new Dan Hardy now. He gets a couple wins, he’s right back in the picture. And he’s capable of it.”

There’s a fairly large group of MMA fans who have no interest in seeing a super-fight between Anderson Silva against Georges St. Pierre. They view it as a (potentially) one-sided route for Silva, who is just too big for the welterweight to handle. When contemplating a style clash, too many people can’t get past the size difference.

St. Pierre himself has trouble with the notion. He says he’d need time to add 10-15 pounds of muscle if he were to attempt a fight at 185 pounds. GSP avoiding a size mismatch has become a sticking point.

Theoretically, Anthony Johnson should carry a little extra intrigue as he makes his way toward St. Pierre’s belt for this very reason. He’s still far from that shot, but Johnson cuts the weight equivalent of a Keeshond each time he enters the cage. Johnson weighs in the 215-220 pound range at his farthest orbit from fight night; that’s in the ballpark of Silva’s walk-around weight, and Silva is a considered big for a middleweight.

What does that make "Rumble"? A gargantuan welterweight with a yogi’s gift of self-compaction. Or, more directly, a large middleweight interloping as an improbable 170-pounder.

If you watched the fight this weekend, you know that Johnson had to have been around 190 pounds by the time Bruce Buffer introduced him. Poor Charlie Brenneman never stood a chance. Just as Dan Hardy never did. After experimenting with cutting weight -- and failing on a couple of occasions to make it -- Johnson seems have figured out a way to touch base at 171 pounds, race to the fridge, and then reappear as the Incredible Hulk 24 hours later.

Whatever his secrets are, this could be disconcerting to St. Pierre at some point in the not-so-distant future. If Johnson gets a couple more wins without repeating a Rich Clementi or Yoshiyuki Yoshida incident (where he couldn't even get within six pounds of his mark), St. Pierre would be faced with a size problem without leaving the division he’s ruled so long to find it. In this way, Johnson would be bring the middleweight division to GSP, which would be a strange twist to things.

But a potential fight with St. Pierre is intriguing for other reasons besides just the size difference. Since Rumble has began fighting smarter -- using his wrestling, patiently picking his moments, using his length and athleticism to dictate the fight -- he’s looking like a far more complete fighter.

When Dan Hardy tried to lure him into a brawl, Johnson coolly brought things to the ground and fought intelligently (another adjective to describe it could be “boring”). When the wrestler Brenneman tried to shoot, whatever he found attached to Johnson’s ankles was immoveable.

St. Pierre has made a career of stifling his opponents' strengths since losing to Matt Serra in 2007. With Johnson, he’d be facing an athlete who can wrestle, who’s long, who’s heavy, and who’s fighting with an overall purpose more centered on winning than simply obliterating people.

St. Pierre-Johnson is a long way from actually happening, of course. Johnson will likely need to beat a couple of top-10 welterweights to get there, prove he has a gas tank, prove that the Josh Koscheck fight was, if not an aberration, at least a lesson learned. And who knows if GSP will have already fled by then, anyway?

But Johnson does bring a different challenge up the rungs, and it’s sort of fun to think about.

British MMA is still awaiting its first UFC champion, but Dan Hardy can aid the defense of a title at UFC 137 after he was enlisted by Georges St. Pierre for his fight with Carlos Condit. More »

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