Quote: Nate Diaz Still Unhappy With UFC Contract
Is Nate Diaz happy with his UFC contract? F**k no!
UFC lightweight Nate Diaz will be fighting for the first time in over a year come this December. The younger half of the notorious Diaz bros is slated to fight against #3 lightweight Rafael Dos Anjos at UFC on FOX 13. Last seen knocking out the shell of Gray Maynard in November 2013, Diaz has been sidelined awaiting a better, or more profitable contract with Zuffa.
It would appear that Diaz and the UFC finally have come to terms after such a long stand-off between the two, right? Wrong. In fact, according to Nate’s manager Mike Kogan, nothing has changed since signing the original contract before the Benson Henderson beat down. Check out the video interview with Kogan, courtesy of Fight Hub TV below:
“No. Fuck no we weren’t happy when we were signing it. We just kind of made it work because it was two weeks before the fight and there just wasn’t time to be making a lot of waves. It is what it is. Nobody said everything’s OK. He (Diaz) is back because he needs to fight. He needs to earn a living. If he was (Floyd) Mayweather making $30 million a fight, he’d probably never come back and you’d never hear from him again, but he doesn’t get paid the kind of money that people think he does. You can’t sit out forever. You have to at some point come back, but at least he came back on his own terms. He got the fight that he wanted against a top three contender.”
At this stage, Diaz just needs to fight to stay relevant in the ever-deep lightweight division. RDA is probably the toughest opponent available at this time, and a top 5 opponent for an unranked and absent Diaz seems to be more than adequate. So what is the problem? Well, Kogan seems to have big issues with UFC president Dana White:
“The guy (Dana) spent a whole year trashing (Nate) and now he’s fighting a No. 3 guy in the co-main event on FOX. Talk about needle movers. If he’s not moving the needle then what is he doing there? How do you get to a co-main event and you’re not a needle mover and you’re insignificant and ‘I don’t care if he never fights again, he can just go away forever.’ Nate is my boy. If somebody talks to him this way, I’m going to say what I’m going to say.”
“It is one thing to have a relationship. It is another thing to be bullied around; wake up everyday trying to check the temperature outside to see if its gonna be a good day or not.”
“So much for not being a needlemover.”
Diaz’s manager is referring to the time White said Nick Diaz was a needle mover, but Nate was not. Perhaps the UFC president was implying that Nick moves the PPV needle, as opposed to the co-main event slot on a winter FOX card?
Do you think Nate Diaz just needs to shut up and work at this point, or is his beef with the UFC symbolic of a larger struggle in a company often referred to as a ‘monopoly”?
