Last week after the dust settled on lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos’ withdrawal from his UFC 196 bout against Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz stepped in to replace him, the promotion put on an impromptu press conference in Torrance, California, and the result will almost certainly go down as one of the most memorable trash talk battles in UFC history.
McGregor predictably flung silver-tongued insults at Diaz from angles, some of which centered on his supposed thug persona and contradictory teaching tendencies. Diaz, however, chose to be more quiet, letting the brevity of his fewer words resonant stronger.
Perhaps the most heated reaction from either fighter came when Diaz accused the now bulked-up McGregor, who will go from 145 pounds all the way up to 170 for this fight, of being on steroids. His response made Diaz’ boxing coach Richard Perez believe that ‘The Notorious’ has something to hide, a stance he detailed during a recent interview with Submission Radio:
“Oh I sure do believe that, heck yeah. Some guys, they get busted – and to be honest with you, I know McGregor has got to be on some kind of steroids, he’s pretty big. And then all of a sudden [he’s] jumping to 170? Yeah there’s no way, cause I mean, he was supposed to be fighting at 155. So if you think about it, he was focusing on training at 155. He only had two weeks to go. And all of a sudden he’s gonna jump to 170? So no, there’s something going on. But still, I mean, we’re still gonna fight and that’s all there is to it.”
Expanding upon his reasons for his opinion, Perez said that McGregor’s reaction tipped his hand, as a competitor who was truly not on steroids would have laughed off the words rather than get defensive:
“When Nathan mentioned it to him he got defensive, he got angry. If somebody would have told me that I was fighting and he told me, you know, steroids, I would laugh and say, ‘yeah give me some more steroids, heck yeah, ah ha sure’. But he got defensive and mad, you know, “I’m not on steroids, I’m not on steroids”. You know, he was like trying to defend himself. So that, just his actions and the way he talked is…there’s something behind that.”
There’s no question whatsoever that McGregor has been packing on the pounds after draining himself to the point of exhaustion for his bouts at 145 pounds, but a most have attributed that to his move up a weight class to face dos Anjos.
A move up two full weight classes is understandably concerning to the MMA community as a whole, however. With performance-enhancing drugs one of the hottest topics in the UFC, do you believe Perez’ words hold weight, or he is simply hyping the already massive bout even further?
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