After weeks of speculation as to what fights might appear on the UFC’s 200th PPV event, the mega-event is coming together fast. As announced yesterday, Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz will rematch each other at 170 pounds, while Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar will battle for an interim 145-pound belt. There’s been a bit of controversy amongst fans on McGregor getting a rematch, but UFC president Dana White didn’t mince words on why they put the fight together.
“Conor McGregor is a guy who has had fights fall out seven days before he’s supposed to defend his title, and he steps up and he takes on all comers,” he said on Sportscenter when revealing the fight. “The guy fights anybody, anywhere, anytime. He’s stepped up on late notice and done these things. He wants this Nate Diaz fight? We’ll give it to him.”
While Diaz is happy to take the paycheck that comes along with the fight, he isn’t blind to the favoritism McGregor has received.
“I’ve never lost a fight and not wanted to fight the guy 10 minutes later,” Diaz told ESPN. “The UFC is pumping him up again, saying he wants to redeem himself and giving him all this credit for it. It’s like, dude, I’ve been obsessed with every fight I’ve ever lost. This is a gift for him to get it right away.”
“I swear to God, the UFC thinks it was an accident or something. They think it was an accident, and now they’re saying ‘Let’s get Nate back in there and take him out before he gets any bigger.’ ”
While the UFC has started promoting Diaz a little more in the wake of his victory, with stuff like appearances on UFC Tonight, the younger Diaz brother knows they’d rather be promoting an unbeaten McGregor. There were even rumors the UFC had planned on having McGregor face Georges St-Pierre at UFC 200 had the Irishman won.
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“I put a big old hole in that s**t,” Diaz told Chael Sonnen on a recent episode of the former fighter’s podcast. “What did they think, that I’m some game they can play? I can’t be f**ked with, I been in the game too long. They wanted to have this big old GSP vs. McGregor bulls**t, with Georges sitting in the front row at UFC 196, I don’t even wanna hear about that s**t! Get the f**k outta here with that. What the f**k?”
“I pissed off Conor McGregor, I pissed off GSP, but most of all I pissed off the UFC. Well guess what? LOL motherf**kers. Georges is full of s**t, he’s a bully, he was going to fight this little Irish featherweight guy? He would have held him down, that’s a freak-show fight, man.”
There’s a certain amount of truth to the words Diaz is speaking. The UFC has been so focused on McGregor’s superstardom that they’re missing an excellent opportunity to present Diaz as a star in his own right. Then again, the Diaz brothers are notoriously unruly and unreliable. The UFC actually pulled older brother Nick out of a superfight with St-Pierre the first time it was booked because he refused to show up at a press conference to promote it.
With both sides feeling disrespected, it’s no surprise both feel wary about working together. Here’s hoping the UFC manages to bridge the gap somehow. Nick’s latest marijuana suspension ends in August, and Nate has already proven he can beat McGregor on 10 days notice. The Diaz business may not be as lucrative as the McGregor business, but there are two of them and a lot of interesting fights that could be made.
(Via MMA Mania)