(You cannot possibly imagine giving less of a fuck than this man. / Photo via Getty Images)
If you want to be absolutely sure that Nick Diaz will blow off a scheduled media appearance, set it up within biking distance of his house. Diaz is notorious for this sort of thing. Our old pal Ben Fowlkes once spent three days wandering the streets of Stockton waiting for Diaz to materialize for a Fight! Magazine cover story. Before Diaz’s fight against Georges St. Pierre, UFC president Dana White revealed that Diaz had no-showed three interviews for their Countdown to UFC 158 special, and that the UFC had a camera crew “rolling around Stockton not doing a (expletive) thing.” Diaz even no-showed his own MMA promotion’s weigh-ins for God’s sake.
The latest media no-show victim is Michael Schiavello, the always entertaining combat sports broadcaster and host of AXS TV’s The Voice Versus, the long-form interview program that has featured everyone from Wanderlei Silva to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Nick Diaz was supposed to be Schiavello’s next interview subject. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be:
It should be said that booking Nick Diaz on an interview program and expecting him to 1) appear at the scheduled date/time, and 2) give a lucid, light-hearted interview poking fun at his own persona should have been considered an impossibility to begin with. In that sense, Schiavello really has himself to blame. (See also: scorpion, frog.)
Still, let this be a lesson to any media-types hoping to get some time with MMA’s most inscrutable fighter: It’s not going to work out, and even if it does, Diaz will probably threaten to slap you. In fact, that’s a best-case scenario. So how ’bout we just agree to go our separate ways?