Conditioning coach: Nate Diaz was basically coming off couch for Conor McGregor

When Nate Diaz told UFC President Dana White he was in shape for a short-notice fight with Conor McGregor at UFC 196, he was mostly being truthful.

When he said he was training for a triathlon, that wasn’t technically a lie. Diaz is always active in some way or another.

Just three months ago, the UFC veteran had put in a solid training camp for a pivotal fight with Michael Johnson at UFC on FOX 17, and the benefits of his hard work were still present.

It just so happened that wasn’t the full story. An Instagram post today on Diaz’s official account told the more truthful one about his readiness for this past Saturday’s UFC 196.

According to a video posted by the now-victorious welterweight, he was shooting tequila on a yacht in Cabo San Lucas, “gettin my chillax on wit my dudes … before I got the call.”

“But #alwaysreadyforwar in season or not,” Diaz added.

The way Diaz’s longtime conditioning coach describes the situation, there was a good foundation to build on. It just wasn’t the most ideal one for taking a pay-per-view headliner opposite Conor McGregor.

But it’s nothing new for the brothers Nick and Nate, said Damian Gonzalez, a pro triathlete who’s worked with Team Diaz going on six years alongside Cesar Gracie, Richard Perez, Victor Galdon and Val Ignatov.

Unsurprisingly, Gonzalez shares the Diaz’s dissatisfaction – politely put – over how they’ve been treated thus far in the UFC, and a general suspicion of the promotion’s intentions in how and when it puts together fights with the brothers from Stockton, Calif.

“I feel they get sold short,” Gonzalez said. “They don’t get paid as much as they should. They use them to make money and then don’t break them off.”

Gonzalez also holds the hope that things might change now that Nate Diaz (19-10 MMA, 14-8 UFC) has upset one of the UFC’s biggest stars in spectacular fashion. When the 30-year-old veteran submitted McGregor (19-3 MMA, 7-1 UFC) via rear-naked choke at this past Saturday’s pay-per-view event, he may have earned himself a bigger seat at the negotiation table. And perhaps, a yacht of his own.

“I think now, things are going to change,” Gonzalez said. “Now, I think they’ll treat these guys equally.”

But until the tide started to turn around for Diaz in the second frame, and the weight of McGregor’s aspirations left him gasping for air, it was a gamble built on a slight bluff. The Diaz brothers have always been known as tough and durable. But if a white lie needed to be told to get an amazing opportunity, so be it.

Triathlon training? Sure, that works.

“I think that he told Dana that really just to put them at ease, like, ‘Yeah, we’re in shape,’” Gonzalez said. “He can’t tell Dana, ‘I’m sitting here on the beach having a cocktail.’ You just can’t say that.

“So you can look at it that way – he needs to recover from his last fight so he can start training again and triathlon season is coming. So technically, yeah, but not exactly the way everybody spun it.”

When Gonzalez got a call from Diaz 10 days from the fight, on Feb. 24, he immediately invited Diaz to a local track to test his conditioning.

“I was worried,” he said. “He was worried. Everybody was concerned about his conditioning, especially the people around him.”

Gonzalez felt better when Diaz notched solid times in 400-meter runs. Then the work began to get him into as good shape as possible by March 5, the date for UFC 196 at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena.

“He was going to cram in a lot of work in short time, but he needed to recover from it,” Gonzalez said. “Basically what we were doing was shorter workouts, but a lot of workouts throughout the day, doing short duration.

“But the volume was pretty high, with a lot of intensity and a lot of recovery. They can’t take any illegal supplements; they’re not really into all that stuff, so basically, it’s just, when you’re not working out, you’re recovering.”

Gonzalez is short on specifics of what Diaz did to get himself ready for McGregor, who reportedly green-lit a welterweight bout when Diaz asked for a 165-pound catchweight fight. Not wanting to give away Diaz’s secrets, he did back the fighter’s post-bout claim that the plan was to hang back and let the Irish featherweight champ wear himself out.

“Conor is super explosive, and so for Nate, it was not necessarily his usual game plan of pressing the action,” Gonzalez said. “Because he knew the guy would come to fight. So it was more about letting him see what Conor has and conserve his energy and then adjust to that, and then pick it up.”

What the conditioning coach will say is that years of actual training for triathlons has left the veteran with the ability to persevere when energy stores are low. Diaz might have been closer to beach mode than beast mode when he took the fight, but he was still capable of going five rounds.

“For triathletes, it takes a lot more than the average person for you to redline and make you tired,” he said. “So when the other guy is redlining, that’s when he makes mistakes. You have mental lapses. And even a split-second mental lapse in MMA, bad things can happen.”

They certainly did with McGregor, whose bid for the welterweight title held by Robbie Lawler (27-10 MMA, 12-4 UFC) may be usurped by Diaz.

For complete coverage of UFC 196, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

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