Midnight Mania! White Demands ‘F—ing Morons’ Stop Whining About Diaz Vs. Chimaev

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Welcome to Midnight Mania!

Khamzat Chimaev is a hot button topic right now. The surging Chechen has been unprecedently dominant inside the Octagon, rocketing up into the Welterweight Top 10 on the strength of four straight finishes. What’s next for “Borz?” That depends on who you ask, as many are pointing to Gilbert Burns, while Neil Magny is also doing his best to angle for a showdown vs. the wrestler.

UFC and Dana White, meanwhile, are primarily interested in pitting Chimaev vs. Nate Diaz. Social media reactions to that potential booking are widely negative, and it’s a prominent viewpoint that UFC is looking to “devalue” Diaz before free agency by ending his UFC career with a one-sided loss to a historically bad style match up.

Robbie Foxx of BarStool Sports brought up resistance to the matchup to White, and the UFC President aggressively shut it down. In particular, White took real offense to the idea of devaluing Diaz.

“This isn’t a diss, I love Nate Diaz,” White began. I love Nick and Nate as much as anyone else. You get to a point in fighting, in your professional career in sports, where it’s like ‘Can I hang here anymore?’ Does everybody know he lost his last fight? How are you going to devalue him? What if he loses to someone else that we match him up with, would he be devalued? How does Khamzat Chimaev devalue him? You know how massive that fight ..?”

In classic White fashion, he also took an opportunity to slam the naysayers and doubters, reminding listeners who exactly runs the show.

“Here’s the moral of the story: all these people are f—ing morons and have no idea what they’re talking about. I actually run the biggest f—ing combat sports business on planet f—king Earth. So, shut the f—k up and let me do my job!”

For what it’s worth, this may all be a non-issue, as Diaz himself posted to his Instagram story a clip that seems to show very little interest in fighting “Borz.” Diaz has been vocally calling for fights with Vicente Luque and Tony Ferguson, but it ultimately remains to be seen what Welterweights end up where.

Insomnia

Deontay Wilder deserves some rest after the Tyson Fury trilogy, but when he’s ready to come back, Andy Ruiz seems like a good match up.

A huge loss for the sport:

This man’s rage simply could not be contained.

Bruce Buffer is looking to become the top MMA representative in the booze business.

Mark Madsen will attempt to continue his Lightweight rise opposite the ultra tough Vinc Pichel — this should be a scrap!

I definitely want to see Kamaru Usman rematch Colby Covington, but no fight is made worse by the addition of Vicente Luque.

SWEEP!

Slips, rips, and KO clips

There’s a certain perverse joy in sloppy Heavyweight MMA.

Timed the spinning strike perfectly and then showed great restraint afterward — nice!

The kickboxers are taking our calf kicks! Outrageous.

Random Land

A reenactment of Francis Ngannou vs. Alistair Overeem (here’s hoping this dude is okay).

Midnight Music: “I Can’t Make It Anymore” by Richie Havens stood out on my Discovery Weekly as a really soulful and plaintive track, and apparently, he performed the song at Woodstock — that’s pretty cool!

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.