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LAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to Nick Diaz on Wednesday about whether he enjoyed the road to UFC 137, why he expected something bad to happen to him prior to the Georges St-Pierre fight, why he didn’t show up to the pre-fight press conference, his newfound fame and much more.
Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, News, Videos
LAS VEGAS — MMA Fighting spoke to Nick Diaz on Wednesday about whether he enjoyed the road to UFC 137, why he expected something bad to happen to him prior to the Georges St-Pierre fight, why he didn’t show up to the pre-fight press conference, his newfound fame and much more.
Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, NewsUFC president Dana White has already stated that the new UFC 137 main event between BJ Penn and Nick Diaz will not be a five-round fight because, as he put it, “they haven’t trained for five rounds.”
Howev…
Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, News
UFC president Dana White has already stated that the new UFC 137 main event between BJ Penn and Nick Diaz will not be a five-round fight because, as he put it, “they haven’t trained for five rounds.”
However, Diaz’s manager and trainer Cesar Gracie wants the world to know that Diaz is ready and willing to go five rounds with “The Prodigy” on Oct. 29.
“If they can’t fight five rounds against each other, how are they going to fight five rounds against GSP?,” Gracie said to MMAFighting.com on Tuesday.
Gracie said he told White that Diaz wanted to change the fight to a five-rounder but had yet to hear back from Penn’s camp. After speaking to Gracie, both White and Penn could not be immediately reached for comment.
“Dana is good with it,” he said. “We’ve agreed to it. If BJ agrees to it, we’ll make it happen.”
Gracie added that there was no hesitation on Diaz’s part to agree to a five-round fight after hearing the news of GSP’s injury and subsequent removal from the card.
“These guys have to prove they are ready. These guys are fighters. BJ has always said he’s a warrior. … The old school days of MMA, back when it was NHB, they fought forever.
“Don’t be scared, homie. Let’s make it five rounds.”
It’s hard to imagine it now, but back when UFC president Dana White first used the phrase “business as usual” (many, many times) to describe what life would look like for Strikeforce after the Zuffa purchase, it wasn’t a punchline. He meant it. Sort of…
It’s hard to imagine it now, but back when UFC president Dana White first used the phrase “business as usual” (many, many times) to describe what life would look like for Strikeforce after the Zuffa purchase, it wasn’t a punchline. He meant it. Sort of. Maybe he even believed it, or at least he expected us to believe it.
That lasted about fifteen minutes.
Now, with the announcement that Strikeforce champ Nick Diaz will face Georges St. Pierre at UFC 137 this fall, we can finally put it to bed for good and forget we ever even considered taking it seriously. Snatching Strikeforce’s champ and signing him to a new contract so he can fight the UFC champ? Not business as usual. Not even close. And we should all be very, very glad.
After UFC 129, when White was asked whether a GSP-Diaz fight was even possible under the current contracts, the big bossman replied that he could probably do whatever he wanted to do with Diaz – if he wanted it badly enough.
Translation: if fans get vocal enough about wanting to see this fight and no other, we’ll move mountains to make it happen if we have to.
Fans were, so the UFC did. While a GSP-Anderson Silva superfight might get some people’s motors running, putting it off in order to allow St. Pierre a chance to cement his welterweight status once and for all is the move that makes more sense. GSP-Diaz is the fight that feels like it absolutely has to happen, and now it will.
Sadly, such is not always the case in combat sports.
For instance, remember back when Diaz versus “Mayhem” Miller seemed like the bout that made the most sense for Strikeforce? You know, since Miller was an MTV star who’d been jumped by Diaz and crew on live network television, and since the two couldn’t be in the same building without wanting to murder one another?
That fight would have promoted itself, but Strikeforce couldn’t make it happen. Between discrepancies over the weight the two would fight at, and CBS’ irrational hatred for Miller, nothing ever got done. It was a perfect moment, but the moment passed with nothing to show for it.
Or take Diaz’s recent boxing ultimatum. Unless the UFC gave them St. Pierre, Diaz’s manager, Cesar Gracie, told MMA Fighting in early May, his fighter was going to take his talents to the boxing ring for a bout with Jeff Lacy. Whether you think trading leather with the big gloves would have been a good idea or a horrible one for Diaz, in the end it was his decision to make. Strikeforce had given him a contract that allowed for it, so who was going to stop him?
Obviously, it doesn’t serve Zuffa’s interest to let Diaz get punched in the face by a washed-up former boxing champ while the UFC welterweight champ suffers from a dearth of compelling challengers, so it did what it had to do to talk him off the ledge. As Gracie put it in an interview with USA Today, the UFC “compensated [Diaz] for not boxing,” and in the end it got what it wanted.
More importantly, the fans got what they wanted. The cross-promotional champion-versus-champion fight that seemed so unrealistic that it was hardly even worth talking about a year ago was now a reality with a date and a venue. While we can’t pretend there are no down sides to having so much power in the MMA world consolidated under one Las Vegas roof, it’s moves like this that remind us of the considerable upsides.
If Strikeforce were still its own, independent organization, sure, that would make for better negotiating positions for fighters. It would give them more options, especially in the early or late stages of their careers (see also: Dan Henderson).
At the same time, then we’d probably never see Diaz fight St. Pierre. We’d probably never get a chance to find out who the best welterweight fighter in the world was. We’d just guess and speculate and argue, which is what we’ve been doing for the past few years, and – honestly? – I think we’ve gotten all the fun we’re going to get out of that exercise.
That was the old business as usual. This is the new one. And while it’s not without its potential pitfalls, so far there’s also a lot to like.
Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive, NewsAt UFC 130, Dana White didn’t sound very confident that he would be able to put together the much talked about Nick Diaz vs. Georges St-Pierre super-fight. However, on Wednesday afternoon, the UFC president ann…
Filed under: UFC, FanHouse Exclusive, News
At UFC 130, Dana White didn’t sound very confident that he would be able to put together the much talked about Nick Diaz vs. Georges St-Pierre super-fight. However, on Wednesday afternoon, the UFC president announced the fight was a done deal and would take place at UFC 137 on Oct. 29 in Las Vegas.
MMA Fighting spoke to Cesar Gracie, Diaz’s manager and trainer, about how the deal was completed and what this means for Diaz’s Strikeforce future.
A transcript of the conversation can be found below.
Ariel Helwani: How did this deal get done?
Cesar Gracie: We just sent the contract yesterday and it arrived in their office today.
Is Nick now a UFC fighter?
You know what? That’s an interesting question and they have not told me how they’re going to structure that.
So is his Strikeforce belt on the line?
I don’t know. I truly don’t. They haven’t told me if his belt is on the line. I don’t think so. This is not like that because if his belt was on the line that would make GSP the Strikeforce champion (if he wins). And then what? He’s going to fight someone from Strikeforce? I don’t think that’s happening. But then again, refer to Dana on that one because I truly don’t know.
Did Nick sign a one-fight deal with the UFC or a longer one?
We have a new deal. Multi-fight, multi-year contract with the UFC.
How many fights is the new contract for?
I can tell you it’s a multi-fight, multi-year contract. I can’t tell you how many fights.
So it sounds like he is a UFC fighter now.
Right, but the contract does give the option to fight in Strikeforce. So what that opens up is the potential for him to also fight in Strikeforce.
Over the weekend, Dana White referred to some issues which were stopping this fight from being made. Do you know how those were resolved?
There was a lot of misinformation — there were a lot of reports out there that weren’t true. Showtime, I don’t think was a problem, to be honest with you, at all. They don’t have a contract with Nick. Nick’s contract is strictly with Explosion [Strikeforce’s parent company prior to the Zuffa purchase]. It has never been a contract with Showtime. So the reports you heard were erroneous and false. Other than that, the hurdles were the [Jeff] Lacy thing, stuff like that. I don’t know if they were Strikeforce, and if they were, Nick signed a new contract that dissolved his old contract with Strikeforce.
Do you know if Showtime is getting any kind of percentage of the pay-per-view?
No idea.
Any idea why Vegas was chosen as the site of the fight?
There were two venues they were looking at: one was in Canada and one was in Vegas. We didn’t know which one it was going to be until today.
Would you have been OK with fighting in Canada?
I did tell them it would be better if we fought in Vegas, obviously, because then the belt wouldn’t have very much further to go once Nick gets it (laughs).
Do you think this marks the end of Nick’s run in Strikeforce?
Hopefully. If he’s back in Strikeforce, I would imagine that’s because he lost his next fight.