A few months ago, Conor McGregor was on top of the world, looking at a chance to become the first UFC dual-weight champion. An injury to then lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos later, and Mystic Mac would put his featherweight belt in the closet for a quick stop at welterweight, where he would fight Nate Diaz, who stepped in to fight on 11 days notice. The rest, as they say in the 209, is history, motherf*cker.
Nate walked away from the UFC 196 Octagon bloodied and not surprised that he tapped Conor McGregor, and he probably wasn’t surprised that Conor wanted an immediate rematch. As Nate has said (I’m paraphrasing here) — if you don’t want to fight the guy who beat you, why are you even in this sport? This makes sense, considering the Diazes have never lost a fight they didn’t think they won.
So the rematch was set for UFC 200, then it wasn’t. Now we’re weeks from UFC 202, and a rematch that many, including myself, deemed pointless is staring us in the face, grabbing our collars and saying, “pay attention to me. This sh*t is real now.”
It’s so real now.