Nate Diaz was on fire Saturday night at the UFC on FOX event in Florida, scoring a dominating win over lightweight contender Michael Johnson before going off on a very Diaz-esque rant on national television — one very few people heard because the censors had to bleep nearly the whole thing out.
“Conor McGregor, you’ve taken everything I’ve worked for, motherf**ker!” he yelled into the mic during his post-fight interview. “Imma fight your f**king ass! You know what’s the real fight, the real money fight: Me! Not these clowns you’ve already punked at the press conference! No one wants to see that, you know you’ve already beat them motherf**kers! That’s the easy fight. You want the real sh*t, I’m right here!”
If the UFC was unhappy with the expletive-filled tirade, it’s apparently not affecting their plans to push Diaz into a big money fight with Irish superstar Conor McGregor. According to Nate Diaz, UFC matchmaker Joe Silva talked to him after his win and said a McGregor fight “is on.”
“He said (the McGregor fight) is on, we’re going to do this,” Diaz told MMA Fighting. “Hell yeah, they want it. Everybody wants that fight. It’s what they want.”
“If people want to see a real fight, they know who to call,” he said. “I’ll train hard and ninja his ass up. Ninja real sh*t, not no funny fake ‘let’s fight, but let’s be good friends, it’s a sport’ — F*ck that, f*ck the sport. This is fight sh*t. This is ninja sh*t. That’s what people want to see.”
Don’t get your hopes too high just yet, though. Nate Diaz has been known to embellish his fight opportunities in the past and may be trying to make this fight happen via the press. If he says he’s fighting Conor, and the MMA world reacts in excitement, it raises the chances McGregor and the UFC will see him as the biggest money option at the moment and accept his offer to ninja s**t up.
And based on how things have landed, Diaz is right: he is the most interesting option for McGregor. A lightweight title fight between champ Rafael Dos Anjos and Donald Cerrone ended with Dos Anjos winning. Good for Dos Anjos, but he’s a relatively unknown champion who will do little to sell a fight. And waiting for Conor at 145 pounds is Frankie Edgar – a tough and worthy opponent, but of interest to serious fight fans only.
If Conor McGregor wants to chase after big money fights, Nate Diaz could be a perfect welcome to the lightweight division. In a fighting world where bankability is an increasingly important factor, he makes dollars and sense.
Line them up on their knees with their hands out. I want them to beg me. pic.twitter.com/YCYf0QslNR
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) December 20, 2015
(Via Bloody Elbow)
