Nick Diaz has been known to skip press conferences, open workouts and various other media events, but he always shows up to fight, even when paired against one of the greatest fighters in MMA history.
From a bird’s-eye view, Diaz’s mettlesome attempt to go up in weight and ruin the long-awaited return of former UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva seemed like a pipe dream. It seemed unrealistic on the surface to believe that a welterweight coming off of back-to-back losses to Georges St-Pierre and Carlos Condit would be capable of usurping a fighter as great as Silva.
While Diaz didn’t actually win at UFC 183, he turned a pipe dream into reality by matching wits with Silva in a 25-minute striking match. The settled dust from Saturday’s headliner left plenty of questions lingering on the state of MMA judging. All three judges scored the fight for Silva, with two judges giving the Brazilian all five rounds.
Immediately after the fight, Diaz told UFC commentator Joe Rogan that he felt he won “every round,” and his tone didn’t change at the post-fight press conference: “I know how I feel at the end of the fight. I don’t know what the judges are thinking, but I definitely pushed forward the whole time. I don’t know how they judge fights sometimes.”
Pundits suspected Diaz to be the better boxer of the two fighters leading up to the proposed superfight.
Silva, who is arguably the greatest striker in UFC history, fought a smart fight in refusing to give up distance to the Stockton brawler. As Diaz pushed forward to gain ground, Silva would throw side kicks to the knee to stagger his movement or angle his way out of the pocket to reset his stance.
Diaz is known for his nefarious cage antics and taunting, but it was pretty obvious early in the fight that he was growing increasingly frustrated with Silva’s conservative approach. At one point in the first round, he even dropped to the ground and openly mocked the former UFC champ for not engaging.
In fights that go the distance, Diaz currently stands at 5-8, an alarming and befuddling stat that he hopes to improve on:
I get real confused on how to win a fight out here initially. And then, nowadays, when you watch their counterstrikes and all that stuff. I don’t know what’s what until I see it. I don’t know how many punches were thrown or what. I just know that I could see this guy’s punches. He don’t think he could have finished me. If anybody was gonna finish anybody, it was gonna be me finishing him.
After suffering his third consecutive loss, the future is once again up in the air for Diaz. He still has the skill set to contend at 170 pounds, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he simply decided to pick up his ball and go home.
Jordy McElroy is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. He is also the MMA writer for Rocktagon and FanRag Sports.
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