Nate Diaz’s Manager Says He’s Been Trying to Get His Client a Fight, UFC Not Biting

There has been much made about Nate Diaz’s unhappiness with his current UFC contract and the perception that he is refusing to fight.

The latest public skirmish erupted when Diaz made a Twitter comment directed at recent headliner Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.

“Some people just suck way too much #UFCd**k …” wrote Diaz. “An they where cowboy hats.”

Some people just suck way too much #UFCdick … An they where cowboy hats

— Nathan Diaz (@NateDiaz209) July 15, 2014

UFC president Dana White didn’t take too kindly to Diaz’s remark, saying that the fighter could continue to “sit out” as long as he likes. White didn’t appear in any mood to give any quarter in an attempt to bring the younger Diaz brother back to the Octagon. He has since inked a contract extension for Nate’s older brother, Nick Diaz, to return and fight Anderson Silva.

“Nate can do whatever he wants to do. Nate can sit out and not suck any UFC whatever, for as long as he wants to. Who cares? He’s a grown man,” White told UFC.com.

“Sit out for as long as you want, sit out the rest of your career, it’s your decision.”

SEE ALSO: Dana White Not Caving to Nate Diaz’s Complaints

According to Diaz’s manager, Mike Kogan, however, his client isn’t sitting out. Kogan said in a recent interview with Submission Radio that Diaz was ready to go back to work and that they had proposed several opportunities for it to happen, but the UFC has declined to bring him back.

“I reached out to the UFC before the Donald Cerrone/(Jim) Miller fight even happened and said, ‘hey, how about we fight the winner? Nate beat both of them, they’ve both since fought four times and won, you know,’ and they said, ‘oh you know, let’s see how the guys are after the fight, maybe they’re banged up, maybe there not’,” recounted Kogan.

“Next thing you know, they announce the (Cerrone) fight with Khabib (Nurmagomedov). Then Khabib blows his knee like 15 minutes later and now they’re saying (Cerrone is) gonna be fighting Eddie Alvarez, who’s not even signed with the UFC yet,” he continued.

“And we asked for that fight when Michael Johnson got injured. We hit up the UFC and said, ‘hey, we’ll fight (Josh) Thompson’. That was like 10 day notice, you know. We said maybe ask them if they’ll do like a little higher weight, like a catch-weight, like 160 or something. And they said, ’no, we have it figured out. Don’t worry about it.’”

Asked if there had been any movement on getting his client a fight in the Octagon, Kogan admitted there had not been.

“No, right now nobody’s talking to anybody,” he said. “I mean, Dana made it very clear that Nate should be happy with what he has and he doesn’t see any reason to even discuss it, he’s not really as popular as I guess we believe he is, and that was that, we just kind of stopped there. So right now no, nobody’s talking to anybody.”

For his part, as fiery as his client is, Kogan can sometimes be just as fiery. Some critiques have said perhaps this is an issue that could be causing some of the difficulty for Kogan to try and get Diaz back in the cage.

Whether t is or it isn’t, Kogan isn’t ready to take a backseat to the UFC president when it comes to defending his client.

“If you’re gonna be out there trashing my guy, then I’m gonna say something,” Kogan stated. “I’m not just gonna be sitting back like ‘oh yeah, you know, we’re so blessed to be breathing this air.’”

He also doesn’t think the trash talk between him and White would keep Diaz out of the Octagon.

“I doubt it. I don’t hold grudges; it’s whatever. Dana probably holds grudges, he probably doesn’t really like me very much, but what can I do? Nothing I can do about it,” said Kogan.

“This thing, it wasn’t supposed to be played out in the media. I mean, we tried to have a private conversion a long time ago, and instead of having it, UFC started trashing Nate to media, saying he’s turning down fights, and he’s afraid, and this that and whatever, to which we responded.

“Now, it’s like Jerry springer.”