LAS VEGAS — Nate Diaz is still without a contracted UFC fight, but he did manage to do a little damage in Sin City over the weekend. Diaz was briefly interviewed backstage at the T-Mobile Arena during UFC 276 on Saturday night. The interaction between Diaz and the interviewer escalated when Diaz got physical.
The interviewer, Shawny Mack of internet collective Full Send, approached Diaz for a short interview. Mack made a remark suggesting that Diaz was here to see Sean O’Malley compete on the card, but then Diaz immediately took issue with something Mack previously tweeted.
“Stockton’s finest, Nate Diaz. He’s coming to check out ‘Suga’ Sean, right?” Mack said.
“Nah, you better watch your tweets about my dude who was fighting recently,” Diaz replied.
Diaz suddenly doubled up on his trademark “Stockton Slaps”. He wacked the microphone out of Mack’s hand and then smacked Mack, knocking his hat off. The source of Diaz’s frustration is reportedly disparaging remarks that Mack made about Diaz’s training partner Nick Maximov, according to Jason Hartley.
Diaz (20-13) has not competed since losing a unanimous decision to UFC welterweight title challenger Leon Edwards last year. Diaz has repeatedly demanded to complete the last fight on his UFC contract. He accused UFC president Dana White and company of putting him on ice.
More UFC news, rumors
- The aftermath of UFC 276 has set in motion a heated rematch between UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira. The longtime foes have never met in mixed martial arts. Pereira boasts two wins over Adesanya in the kickboxing world and is the only man to ever knockout “The Last Stylebender.” Jon Jones — the former UFC light heavyweight champion and one of Adesanya’s detractors — expects Pereira to mop the floor with Adesanya. “Bro I can’t stop thinking about this —-. How are you going to threaten a guy like Alex with glossy fingernails and a Frozen reference. I’m over here scratching my head,” Jones wrote in a tweet on Saturday. “Bro I just went back and watched Alex P fight!! Yeah I’m riding with him all day. He made it look way too easy. Really hard to believe he was unranked before this fight,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
- Adesanya out-pointed Jared Cannonier at UFC 276 in a fight that was anything but action-packed. Adesanya, in a post-fight scrum with reporters, admitted that he had an “off night” but defended his performance. “And still, I still —— him up,” Adesanya said. “It was in the fight, maybe when I couldn’t find my power shots, my kicks … He was adjusting well.” The middleweight champion also gave no weight to fans bored by the execution of his game plan. “—- them,” Adesanya said. “They’ve been here since 3 p.m., they’re all drunk, they don’t know what real fighting is. I’ve said this, the greats, they all get to this point … GSP, people would boo him, and I’m like, ‘What the —- are you guys watching? You dumb —–. [Muhammad] Ali, Floyd Mayweather, same thing. You get to this point where, like, you’re so great, people just want to see you fall. They just want to see you fall, no matter what. If it’s not like a show-out, spectacular performance, then it’s like, ah, he’s not even that good.”
