The former UFC lightweight title challenger was being sued for $1 million stemming from supposed breach of contract over negotiations around Nate’s UFC 202 bout with Conor McGregor among other claims.
Nate Diaz may have lost his bout with Conor McGregor at UFC 202, but a year and a half later he’s scored a meaningful victory stemming from the event. Back in June of 2017, reports surfaced that a former agency, the Ballengee Group – which had worked with both Nick and Nate Diaz – was suing the younger half of the 209-based duo for more than $1 million.
Their lawsuit claimed that Diaz had broken an agreement surrounding negotiations for UFC 202’s bout with McGregor, and left the agency unpaid for work including negotiations for bouts against Rafael Dos Anjos and Michael Johnson. Now MMA Fighting reports that that lawsuit has been dismissed.
Judge Jane J. Boyle of Dallas County District Court, in Texas, deemed that the lawsuit “failed to demonstrate that this court should exercise personal jurisdiction over Defendants,” in granting Diaz’s team’s motion to dismiss.
“We are very pleased the Court dismissed the case,” an attorney for Nate Diaz said in a recently released statement, “because Nate has not fought in Texas and the case should not have been filed in Texas.”
That doesn’t put Diaz entirely in the clear, however, as the agency making the claim against him could refile the lawsuit in another state. Diaz’s bouts against RDA, Johnson, and McGregor took place in Arizona, Florida, and Nevada respectively. And each of those commissions have somewhat different regulations governing potential contracts between fighters and agents.
As Erik Magraken pointed out in his Combat Sports Law blog, in analyzing the Ballengee lawsuit, this could mean a variety of challenges if the agency decides to continue pursuing their case.
Magraken singled out that the language the agency used in their filing suggests their agreement with Nate may have been a verbal agreement rather than a signed contract, and that the agency did not actually indicate how much money Nate had agreed to pay them, in exchange for their services. All of which may make navigating specific commission regulations on athlete/manager contracts more difficult.
Eventually, Diaz’s legal battles may not be entirely behind him, but it seems like this makes any future litigation against him on the same grounds much more difficult.