There’s an increasingly long queue of high-profile fighters who are eager to fight Michael Bisping, and according to the middleweight champion the latest to throw his hat into the ring is Nick Diaz.
“I’ll tell you something as well, another possible opponent that hasn’t been spoken about, and I was with him a couple of nights ago in New York,” Bisping revealed during his Sirius XM podcast ‘The Countdown’.
“I bumped into him in New York and we got talking. Nick Diaz. Yeah, he’s like, ‘Man, we should fight, we should fight.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m down to fight you no problem.’ And then he says, ‘But we have to do it at 178.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean 178?’ Yeah, yeah, he said we do a catchweight at 178. I’m like, ‘Let’s just do 185.’ He’s like, ‘Nope. 178.’ So anyway, I had a good time with Nick, by the way, we had a couple of drinks and hung out, he’s a good dude.”
Bisping admits he was a bit baffled that Diaz wasn’t interested in his belt and instead wanted a catchweight bout, but he says he had indulged in a few drinks by that stage in the evening, so he didn’t even think to question him further about it.
This actually isn’t anything new for Diaz as he’s requested catchweight fights in the past rather than going all the way up to middleweight, as was the case back in the Strikeforce days when he fought Frank Shamrock at 178lbs and then Scott Smith at 180lbs in 2009, winning both of those fights inside the distance.
During his feud with Jason ‘Mayhem’ Miller he also called him out to a catchweight fight, though it never materialized.
The only time Diaz has gone all the way up to middleweight was in the UFC in January of 2015 when he was given a lucrative opportunity to fight Anderson Silva.
Diaz would be another good opponent for Bisping, but it seems unlikely it’d happen next as the UFC aren’t short of other blockbuster match-ups for ‘The Count’ right now.
The current frontrunner to fight Bisping will surely be Georges St. Pierre who’s expressed his interest in returning after over two years out to fight the Brit for the middleweight title, while Dan Henderson wants a rematch with his old rival for his retirement fight, not to mention the divisions top contenders like Chris Weidman, Luke rockhold and Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza who are all champing at the bit for their shot at the belt.
Diaz’s current marijuana suspension does end in August though, so there’s no doubt that one way or another the UFC will be looking to get him a big fight ASAP.
