Earlier this month, before the UFC 310 ceremonial weigh-ins and UFC 311 pre-fight press conference, former Ulitmate Fighting Championship (UFC) bad boy Nate Diaz made an appearance that had everyone talking because a video came out of him throwing a water bottle (something he often does) towards Team Khabib.
Nate Diaz and Team Makhachev threw water bottles at each other backstage #UFC310 pic.twitter.com/gr3TDd5abt
— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) December 7, 2024
Well, Diaz is innocent … of not throwing a water bottle first, according to No. 1 ranked UFC Flyweight Brandon Royval, who was there.
“A water bottle almost hit me when I was with Nate Diaz, and I’m like, ‘Alright, who the f—k am I f—king up?’ I didn’t care who it was,” Royval told MMA Fighting recently. “Diaz is walking in front of me. The water bottle f—king zooms by my head. That’s another thing people didn’t see. Diaz did not throw that first water bottle. The first water bottle was thrown at him.”
“I know exactly who threw the water bottle. I seen it. It was the Flyweight Russian kid [Tagir Ulanbekov],” Royval revealed. “He was the one who threw the first water bottle. I turned around and saw it. I saw who f—king threw it; it whizzed past my f—king head.”
As one would expect, as soon as the water bottle was thrown Diaz’s way, he retaliated, which was caught on video – and it was that that made Royval want to clear Diaz’s name.
“I swear to God, Nate did not start that shit,” Royval concluded. “As far as throwing water bottles, the video shows Nate throwing the first water bottle, but somebody recorded it because the water bottle was thrown at him first. I was in the back, that shit almost hit me. I was like, ‘What the f—k is going on?’ Oh, it’s Nate Diaz in front of me. I didn’t even realize.”
It’s a good thing Judge “Rawdawg” has cleared Diaz and declared him innocent of this water bottle incident because the Stockton fighter was charged with battery recently for slapping a security guard in Las Vegas.