The UFC have announced that Nate Diaz will fight Matt Brown at UFC 189, but it seems they forgot to keep one of the fighters in the loop about the match-up.
According to Diaz, he wasn’t informed ahead of time that he’d be fighting Brown and had actually been targeting a fight with recently displaced lightweight champion Anthony Pettis instead.
“We were supposed to meet with the UFC next Monday to get my next fight figured out, but then they busted out the Matt Brown fight,” Diaz told mmafighting.com. “I thought I was fighting Anthony Pettis next. He’s trying to fight me and I’m trying to fight him.”
It’s puzzling that the UFC didn’t inform Diaz beforehand, particularly as it means he’ll be moving back up a division to face Brown, but it’s not all bad news as ‘The Immortal’ is someone who he’s expressed an interest in fighting before and given that he’s currently ranked No.5 in the welterweight division it’s a big fight for Diaz.
“I’m open to the Brown fight – I said I wanted to fight him last year – but I don’t like that they made the fight official before we ever negotiated or agreed to it,” Diaz said of the way things have panned out.
The mix-up is unlikely to improve the already frosty relations between the UFC and Diaz, with the Stockton native having only recently returned to action after sitting out for almost the entire 2014 fight calendar in protest at his current contract with the promotion.
