Nick had a laundry list of opponents he wanted from GSP to Michael ‘Venom’ Page to Colby Covington at UF C300. In the end he had to settle on Vicente Luque in Abu Dhabi.
Earlier this week, the UFC shocked the world by announcing the return of Nick Diaz for a fight in Abu Dhabi against Vicente Luque.
Diaz hasn’t been seen since a rough TKO via quitting against Robbie Lawler in 2021. Before that he’d been gone since 2015, unless you were a part of the California clubbing scene in which case you might have seen him out with the homies quite a bit.
So how the heck did Diaz end up in a five round co-main event against Luque in Abu Dhabi this August? The MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani detailed how the fight came together.
“Nick was initially pushing for a GSP fight. Didn’t come to fruition,” Helwani reported. “He was then pushing for a Colby Covington fight at UFC 300. Didn’t come to fruition. He then, after [Michael “Venom” Page’s] win and debut at 299, pushed for that fight on the June 29th Conor McGregor card, UFC 303. Didn’t come to fruition. He then pushed for Kevin Holland on the June 29th card. Thought that that was going to be the one, but as you know, it didn’t come to fruition.”
“He wants to fight. He’s ready to go. He’s in Houston training,” Ariel continued. “He has gotten rid of all the baggage. He’s gotten rid of all the partying, all that stuff. I’m told he’s in a great mental, physical, spiritual space right now, and they say, ‘What about Luque in Abu Dhabi?’ Initially, he didn’t wanna go overseas. But I’m told the people in Abu Dhabi want Nick Diaz.”
We’re not surprised the Abu Dhabi guys are old school MMA heads who appreciate an O.G. badass like Nick Diaz. The UAE invested $150 million in the UFC back in 2009 before the sport was cool, right around when Nick was at his peak.
So which Nick are we going to see in Abu Dhabi 14 years later? Helwani said Diaz looks good right now, but he looked good in training pics before the Lawler fight too, and the Stockton fighter needed the bout moved up a weight class last minute for that one.
“I had heard that he was on a path to being in a really good spot for the Robbie Lawler fight,” Helwani said. “And then some old faces popped up at the 11th hour and got him off that path. This is what I’m being told, and this is why he showed up the way he showed up for that fight. This is what people are saying.”
“If Nick Diaz is in good shape, if he’s in a good spot mentally, physically, if he looks the way he looks in those pictures and videos? Because we saw that leading up to the Lawler fight, and then he showed up looking completely different. If that’s truly what he’s doing and he’s around the right people, I think he can win this. I really do.”
“He hasn’t taken a ton of damage over the last few years,” Helwani concluded. “It’s just a matter of where he’s at, who’s around him, and what the distractions are.”
Those are pretty big matters, considering how his last fight (and the last nine years of his life) went.