Dana White on Diaz brothers: When they're ready to fight, they'll call me

The decision to bump Nate Diaz from the UFC’s official rankings wasn’t retribution, UFC President Dana White said Thursday, but the way a relatively new system works.

“When we talk about this, it’s not like baseball, where it’s been around for 100 years,” White told MMAjunkie at a pre-event media scrum in advance of Saturday’s UFC 173. “This is all new s–t. We just started doing the rankings less than a year ago, so all this stuff a work in progress. In no way was it a retribution to Nate Diaz.”

Although it appeared the promotion was exacting a form of payback when it scratched Diaz (17-9 MMA, 12-7 UFC) from the list for inactivity, despite other fighters who were inactive and yet stayed on, White said the decision to remove him was based on the fact that his fighting future is unknown.

Diaz, who most recently fought in November and knocked out top-10 ranked Gray Maynard, is holding out for a better contract, which has led him to sit on the sidelines as the lightweight division moves on. He periodically calls out potential opponents, most recently the surging Matt Brown, but after several stalled talks, White’s position is to wait things out.

That’s also the UFC executive’s position on Diaz’s older brother, Nick, whom he said was offered several fights since retirement but elected to decline them.

Not surprisingly, Nick Diaz also has chirped about returning to fight for the right money. White wants the former welterweight title contender to return, and recently offered another carrot – a fight with Brown, to apparently no avail.

“I said it to you guys 50,000 times – if Nate Diaz doesn’t want to fight for the next three years, he doesn’t have to fight,” White said. “You can’t force a guy to fight. He came in, signed the contract, and was happy about his contract. But it’s always the same thing with the Diaz brothers – ‘I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t know anything about anything,’ and ‘I don’t know how to do this and I don’t know how to do that.’ OK. Nick is, what, 31, 32 (years old)? And Nate’s a couple years younger than him? What do you do? They’re grown men.

“But Nick is retired. He’s made it very clear that he’s retired. But [the Brown offer] was me responding to Nate saying, ‘I want to fight Matt Brown.’

“We kept offering Nick Diaz fights, and Nick said, ‘I’m retired; I don’t want to fight.’ When he’s ready to fight, he’ll let me know. That’s what everybody doesn’t understand – you don’t want to fight, OK, don’t fight. But you can’t take up a top-10 ranking if you’re not fighting.”

White said it was perpetually injured ex-champ Dominick Cruz who first inspired him to change the way the UFC maintains official rankings, which are voted on by the MMA media. Although Cruz remains at No. 9 in the official rankings, White believed the fighter was at No. 11.

“I let Dominick Cruz stay on there the entire time – he was ranked No. 1 – the entire time within the last two years,” White said. “It’s probably within the last three or four months that he’s fallen out. At one point, he was out of the top-10. He’s back in now, (and) I didn’t notice, but that was the thing that made me decide, I can’t do this again. I was as good as I could be to Dominick in many ways, and these guys aren’t going to take up spot that these guys who are actively fighting – it’s just not fair.

“The day Nate Diaz comes back and fights, you guys make the rankings, you put him back in there, and he pops in wherever you guys rank him. Same thing with T.J. Grant.”

Grant was the No. 1 lightweight contender before he suffered a head injury that’s kept him out of the cage. He was recently removed from the rankings. The difference between Grant and the Diaz brothers, of course, is the amount of attention they garner, and the amount of noise they make. And unlike Grant, they are uninjured, and theoretically, they are ready to fight. They simply want more money.

White said Nate Diaz agreed to his most recent contract, and so he should fight for the amount he is slated to receive. But in the meantime, he said he won’t hold the fighter’s decision to hold out against him.

“If it was a knee-jerk reaction (to remove Diaz from the rankings), I’d tell you,” White said. “It’s not like I’m going to sit here and say, ‘This is the way we run the rankings.’ I don’t dislike Nate Diaz. I never have, and I don’t see a situation where I ever will. It’s just that the guy doesn’t want to fight. If he doesn’t want to fight, how’s it any skin off my back? We’ve got tons of guys who want to fight. When Nate Diaz is ready to fight, he’ll let me know.

“But they want to jump in strategically (and say), I’ll take this fight, or I’ll take a fight at 170, or I’ll take a title shot, give me a title shot. You won one fight in your last three fights. You don’t just jump in and take a title shot. I know the Diaz brothers are fun – I like watching them fight, too. I like watching them do their thing; I like all the things that you and the fans like about the Diaz brothers. But they can’t just jump in whenever they want to and jump over all these other guys that are active and fighting all the time.”

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