Coker Keeps Talking Diaz-Mayhem, But Still May Not Fully Grasp his Role as Strikeforce CEO

Even after last week’s revelation that it would take “a couple fucking million dollars” to get Nick Diaz to meet Jason “Mayhem” Miller at a catchweight, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker says he’s still interested in making that fight … just not so interested that he’d actually take an active role in trying to book it. According to a story out on MMA Weekly this weekend, Coker says he didn’t even call Diaz manager Cesar Gracie during the recent period of negotiation when the fight almost happened, then didn’t.

“Sometimes I’ll call Cesar, but on that occasion I didn’t call Cesar and I let my guys handle it, and it was really close,” Coker said. “I thought it was going to happen, but at the last minute it fell apart. I know weight was definitely one of the issues. The weight they say, ‘Oh it’s only two pounds, three pounds,’ but you know what? When you’re two or three percent body fat, five percent body fat, there’s just not a lot to lose and we just couldn’t bridge the gap. In the future, I’d still like to put that fight together because I think they have some unfinished business with that match-up.”

Dude, seriously? Can you even imagine a situation where the UFC failed to put together a comparatively high-profile bout and then Dana White spoke with the MMA media to say: “Yeah, I wasn’t really involved with that, I had a lot on my plate that day.” No, you can’t, because that would never happen. Say what you want to about Our Fearless Leader, but at least he gets shit done. And when shit doesn’t get done? You hardly ever see anyone from the UFC try to lay off the blame on unnamed underlings.

We’re not sure if we’re even supposed to believe Coker when he says he didn’t bother to call Diaz’s camp to try to set up what would be one of his company’s biggest fights of the year. If we did believe it, could we respect it? Not really, even though it sounds like he still wants to see this match up finally come to fruition.

“That’d be my vote. To me whether it’s at a higher weight or a lower weight, those guys need to get it on,” Coker said. “We all know what happened in Nashville, all the drama there … and whatever happened, happened, and we’re all through with it, but I think the bad blood between those two guys is still there.”

Man, somebody should tell Coker that when it comes to Strikeforce business, he has more than a “vote.”