(“You got a pretty mouth, Nate.”)
During Steve Cofield’s Vegas-based ESPN Radio show today, Donald Cerrone recalled an incident he had recently with Nate Diaz, and to put it lightly, he isn’t impressed with the level of disrespect his UFC 141 opponent showed him.
According to Cerrone, the confrontation happened at the open workouts for UFC 137 and he had no warning that it was going to go south quickly when he approached his teammate and friend Leonard Garcia who happened to be talking to Nate at the time.
Here’s what “Cowboy” says went down:
”Leonard’s my best friend; he’s my brother and he was over there talkin’ to the dude — if someone doesn’t like you, you’re not gonna talk to their best friend, you know what I’m sayin’…. you’re not gonna hang out with them — so Leonard’s over there talking with the dude, and I said, ‘Oh shit, I’ll go over there.’ They were laughing and joking around so when I go over and introduce myself and go, ‘What’s up Nate? I’m ‘Cowboy,’” Cerrone explained. “He fuckin’ slapped my hand away and called me a punk-ass motherfucker and told me to ‘get on.’ I was like, ‘Shit, alright.’ I don’t know what to say to the dude. I don’t know what his point… I guess he doesn’t want to be cordial. He just wanted to be a punk and… go ahead.”
He says that he was so taken aback by Diaz that he found himself at a loss for words at the time and that Diaz quickly exited the room after the incident happened, but points out that when they’re locked in the cage together December 30, there’s nowhere Nate can run.
“I was getting ready to fight Dennis Siver and then he walked away. He just took off after that. It kind of caught me by surprise. I don’t know anything about the guy. I just know that [he and Nick] just wake up pissed off all the time for no reason. It just seems like they’re always mad. Whatever he does to get his mind ready for the fight, it must be it.”
As Cofield points out, Cerrone has used the experience as motivation to train hard for the fight and he affirmed it during the countdown show.
“If you want to talk shit to me, you’re just gonna enrage me and piss me off,” said Cerrone. “So feed my fucking flame. That’s what I say. Let’s go!”
As far as Nate’s older brother goes, Cerrone couldn’t resist taking a jab at Nick’s incoherent ramblings at the press conference following his fight with BJ Penn.
“I was exploding into laughter on some of the comments,” he said. “I was waiting for someone to take the mic away from him, like, ‘That’s enough before you completely ruin yourself. That’ll be enough out of you.’ I was just surprised he kept going on about compensation and no one knew what the fuck he was talking about.”
Diaz video rebuttal in 3…2…1…