In the past few days both Nate and now Nick Diaz have publicly stated that they want a pay rise before they will fight again for the UFC, but their demands look likely to fall on deaf ears.
“They need to be about more money,” Nate Diaz, who’s currently paid $60,000 to show plus $60,000 for a win, told MMAFighting.com earlier this week. “My contract is all [expletive] up. I want to be paid like these other fighters. I’m over here getting chump change. At this point, they’re paying all my partners and other people I train with are getting real money, and it’s too embarrassing for me to even fight again for the money they’re paying me.”
“So they can either pay me or let me go. I’m with that.”
Unfortunately for the lightweight star it seems that UFC President Dana White is unmoved by his comments.
“Nate Diaz came in and signed a new deal and was very happy with his new deal,” White stated yesterday at a media event in L.A. “We gave him a shot at the title and he lost to Benson Henderson. If he would have won, obviously his deal would have changed if he became champion, which he did not. Then he got stopped by Thomson. Thomson finished him.
“Now he comes off a win over Gray Maynard and feels like he should be making Justin Bieber money. Nate needs to get back in there and start fighting, win fights again and earn a title shot again.
“Guess how much money he makes sitting at home? Zero. Get back to work, Nate.”
Meanwhile, Nate’s older brother Nick Diaz also stated yesterday that if the UFC wants him to come out of retirement then they’ll need to furnish him with a hefty pay increase too.
“I’m not considering even for a second fighting any of those guys for less than $500,000,” Diaz told MMAfighting.com after White indicated that he’d offered him a fight with Hector Lombard. “There’s no way.
“I’m retired. Completely retired. Unless the UFC wants to renegotiate for something I’m happy with or I’m going to be fighting for the world title, which is obviously going to be for something I’m happy with because I’ll make a ton of money.
“The UFC wants me to fight. The people want me to fight. I don’t want me to fight. So if we’re going to need me to fight, we’re going to have to work out the right deal.”
$500,000 would make Diaz one of the UFC’s best paid stars ever, higher than the $400,000 basic salary than either GSP or Brock Lesnar commanded for their fights, and equal to the amount that Chuck Liddell received for his last ever fight.
As popular as Diaz is, there’s no chance the UFC are going to pay him that much, especially when he’s coming off back-to-back defeats.
While Dana White is known to be a fan of the Diaz brothers and would undoubtedly like to see them return to the Octagon as soon as possible, all the signs are that he’s going to play the waiting game here, knowing that both fighters are still under contract and sooner or later the chances are that they will need to get back into the Octagon again to keep the wolves from the door.
“If the Diaz brothers want to sit out for the next few years and not fight, they’re absolutely, 100 percent, it’s their right to do that,” White said. “They can keep turning down fights and they can keep sitting out, but I just don’t know how they’re getting money, I don’t know how they’re doing their taxes, I don’t know how you’re going to break off a little bit for your mom for her house if you’re not working. I’d rather not go to f— work either. If someone wants to pay me to not work, I’ll take it. That’s not how it works.”
