Nate Diaz may want to pump the breaks on those vacation plans.
After Conor McGregor put a damper on the their much-anticipated rematch — which was all set to headline UFC 200 on July 9, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada — Nate revealed that he had no intentions of fighting a different opponent at the monumental event.
Dana White, however, is still optimistic and declared during today’s (Weds., April 27, 2016) UFC 200 press conference in New York (video replay here) that he intends to offer Diaz more fights in hopes of keeping the lightweight sensation on the mid-summer card.
His plans:
“So I’ve been on the road all this week, but we are going to offer him some fights to see what he wants to do. It sounded like he wants Conor and only Conor at the press conference, but we gave him the opportunity to come. He was there, he flew in and I didn’t want to rip him of the opportunity to fight at 200 if that’s what he wanted to do. So, we’ll see what happens.”
While a rematch against Conor would have brought Nate another hefty payday, Diaz might want to consider fielding all options. After all, since he’s the odd man out in the whole “Notorious” drama, he can use his current good standing with the company as leverage to write himself a blank check against another top name.
It won’t be the headlining act, though, as that honor now belongs to a championship rematch between light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier and interim titleholder Jon Jones (details).
Of course, White and Co. will have to come correct with the offers if they want the Stockton slugger to reconsider, because for all we know, he may already be somewhere in Mexico downing tequila shots.