Nick Diaz was set to face Georges St-Pierre for the UFC welterweight championship at UFC 137. But, after not appearing at scheduled press conferences twice in one week, Dana White cut him from the event.
It is now reported that Carlos Condit will take Diaz’s place to fight St-Pierre for the welterweight title at the Mandalay Bay Arena, in Las Vegas.
Cesar Gracie, Diaz’s long-time friend, adviser and trainer, has gone on record slamming Diaz’s actions leading to his removal from the event.
“I don’t blame Dana White on this at all,” Gracie today told MMAjunkie. “This is a professional company, and Nick is a 28-year-old man.”
“I’ve stuck up for Nick, even when he was wrong before,” Gracie said. “But he’s let a lot of people down. He’s let his team down. We all bought plane tickets to Vegas. We got hotel rooms booked, paid for. We’ve got all that, and Nick just decided not to go to something he’s supposed to. They’re paying him a lot of money, and in this economy where people don’t have money, he’s blessed. He should be thanking God every night how blessed he is.
Gracie even volunteered to personally take Diaz to the press conferences and even left his own son’s birthday party to ensure that Diaz got to the events. However, Diaz was nowhere to be found and wanted to make his own way to the conference, according to Gracie.
“And instead, he’s not getting on a plane to go to Vegas. I’m extremely disappointed. He’s done a lot of stuff, but this is the worst of it. If I were him, I would be begging Dana White to get my job back and work your way up to a title shot at some point.”
It seems that Diaz’s actions have taken a strain on the pair’s personal relationship:
“At this point, I don’t know what I’m going to do with Nick because he’s not only disrespected the sport, he’s disrespected me and himself,” he said.
“There’s a lot of people in this world that work hard and show up to work, and they’re grateful to have the job,” he said. “And Nick is obviously not one of those.”
Gracie is clearly upset by the events:
“I’ve barely slept in the last couple of days, and it’s sickened me. Here’s the opportunity that I’ve worked for for over 10 years, to mold a guy to become the best possible guy, and to show he can be the best guy in the world. And he takes this opportunity and he acts like an immature child about it.
“It’s disturbing, to say the least. He got what he deserved by not taking this fight. He told everybody he would do whatever it would take to do it, he lobbied for it, and he acts like this. Dana White is 100 percent correct in what he did.”
This is an unfortunate situation and the future seems bleak for Nick Diaz in the UFC.
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