Diaz Emails Show What Happens ‘If You Don’t Cooperate’ With UFC

Alvarez opened up on the kind of scummy tactics fight promoters use to keep their athletes in line, and the behavior wasn’t limited to UFC.

The UFC’s dirty laundry continues to get aired out via document dumps from the anti-trust lawsuit filed against them by former fighters.

A recent motion filed by plaintiffs in the Le v. Zuffa case included private emails from former UFC matchmaker Joe Silva to president Dana White and owner Lorenzo Fertitta. They detail how he ‘lowballed’ Nate Diaz on a new contract offer, and was prepared to ‘bury’ Nate against a ‘really tough guy’ on the prelims if the Stockton fighter didn’t take a deal.

“I lowballed them on purpose the first offer knowing they would turn it down,” Silva wrote. “How about I come back with 29+29, 32+32, 38+38. If they turn it down I put him in a prelim against a really tough guy for his last fight.”

According to former UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, this is par for the course if top brass see you as difficult to work with.

“Oh my God, how dirty, how dirty!” Alvarez said about the Diaz emails. “That’s the sport, and that’s important for the up-and-coming fighter who wants to be in this business: for them to understand that, if you’re not cooperative, what the conversation is in the boardroom. If you’re not cooperative. Those are the conversations that are being had about you, the fighter who’s signing these contracts if you don’t cooperate”

Alvarez made it clear that it wasn’t just a UFC thing. He accused Bellator of doing the same thing. This was back in 2012 when Bjorn Rebney was running the show, and Bellator took Alvarez to court to try and stop him from leaving and signing with the UFC.

“I dealt with this in Bellator, I knew they were trying to kill me off the minute I didn’t want to stay,” he said. “And when you don’t want to stay, and you don’t want to cooperate, the next thing is ‘How can we get him beat? How do we devalue him, to the point to where he can’t fight for anyone else but us?’ That’s just the sport.”

None of this is exactly news to anyone who has followed the sport since the early 2000s, but having proof (in writing, directly from UFC execs!) will undoubtedly help the case of fighters hoping to claw back over a billion dollars in suppressed wages.

“Them emails reveal, it’s so boom, right in your face,” Alvarez said. “It’s talked about, and it’s conspiracy theory. But now we see it, like, oh wow. That’s how they speak about us when we’re not around.”