Along with the biggest win of his career, Nate Diaz also got a lesson in perspective at UFC 196.
Diaz, at least temporarily, slowed the hype train behind Conor McGregor when he submitted him in the second round of an entertaining welterweight scrap on March 5 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
McGregor dominates the news cycle in MMA the way Donald Trump does in the presidential race. And while Diaz wasn’t surprised that the majority of the pre-fight coverage in the condensed 10-day buildup to their fight focused on McGregor, he’s stunned that the post-fight analysis has gone the same way.
You’ve probably heard it, from McGregor himself, from reporters, from other fans and even from UFC president Dana White: There’s no shame in losing, particularly when one jumps up in weight the way that McGregor tried.
That doesn’t sit well with Diaz, who has long had an uneasy alliance with the UFC. He spoke before the fight of never getting “that push” that McGregor receives, and can’t understand why even after he won, the narrative still revolves around McGregor.
After the fight, White mentioned that it “makes sense” that Diaz challenge Robbie Lawler for the UFC welterweight title next, though that bout is far from made at this point. Diaz, who during an interview with Yahoo Sports repeatedly referred to himself as a lightweight fighter, said he’s “done with it if it makes the most sense” financially.
When it was suggested to him that Lawler might physically be too big for him, Diaz launched into a tirade against McGregor on the issue of weight classes and size.
“As far as size is concerned, they’re giving him a lot of credit and making a lot of excuses for him,” Diaz said. “It’s all about how he went up in weight and jumped up two weight classes and did all these great things. But you know what the truth is? He went up one weight class. I’m a lightweight and I wasn’t that big fight day.
“I was out of shape. Well, not out of shape, because I’m always in shape, but he fought me at the worst time to fight me. They knew they were going to fight me and I was in Cabo on a cruise.”
Diaz said he rehydrated to 183 pounds after the weigh-in. He said he awakened on the morning of the fight at 179 and when he left his room to head to the Grand Garden, he was 178. After his warm-up, he estimated he was no more than 174 pounds.
He said he believed McGregor was probably in the low 170s by the time the fight began.
“He’s getting all this credit and everyone wants to make excuses for him, and I don’t get it,” Diaz said. “I’m a lightweight fighter, not a welterweight. I can go up there and fight, but I’m a lightweight. That’s just the way it is, and all this talk that he jumped up two weight classes is [expletive]. That’s all it is.
“And there is all this praise for him for trying to go up two weight classes. I think they should be saying, ‘[Expletive], you just got your ass whipped.’ But it’s not like that. They’re covering up for him and making these weak [expletive] excuses. If I’d gotten my ass whipped, I’d be criticized for it, even though I was an out-of-shape guy with no training camp. Him? Man, even when he loses, they try to make him into something and give him the push.”
Diaz hasn’t had the kind of push he wants from the UFC, in part, at least, because he fights so infrequently. He fought twice in 2012 and 2013 and once each in 2014 and 2015.
White has said the UFC repeatedly offered Diaz fights in 2014 and 2015 that he turned down.
And Diaz said he’s not going to get back into the cage if it doesn’t pay him well.
He loves to fight and conceded it was tough to be out. But he also doesn’t believe he should fight for less than his market value.
“It killed me [to sit so long in 2014 and 2015],” he said. “Fighting drives me crazy, but not fighting drives me crazier. I said the other day to some other guys, I [internalize] this stuff. Like, if I’m not fighting, I’m losing my mind. But when I’m not fighting, I’m losing my mind. Pretty much, can’t live with it, can’t live without it.”
His fight was McGregor came just 88 days after his win over Michael Johnson in December. Prior to that, he had layoffs of 372 days and 379 days between fights.
He’s open to a fight with Lawler, or anyone else that will generate big money. He’s even willing to fight every couple of months if those are the fights he’s offered.
“Like I said before, money talks, and if it’s something big and worth my while, I’m going to do it,” he said. “I’d fight every other month. But if it made no sense to me, I’m not in a rush to do anything. I’m at the top and I just want the biggest things possible.”
