Nate Diaz believes the UFC are trying to keep him out of the spotlight and steer Conor McGregor clear of a trilogy fight between the two after he was denied seats at the historic UFC 205 event on Saturday night.
“The UFC knows that’s a bad idea for him,” Diaz said in an interview for ESPN. “Why didn’t I get tickets to this fight? I said, ‘I’ll leave him alone. I don’t want to fight the guy. Just let me get a seat.’ Me and my brother, they didn’t want to let either one of us in here.
“They want to hide me out, I think. Put him on more of a pedestal than they have already. It’s whatever though.”
McGregor now has plenty of options available to him, from lightweight title defenses against the likes of Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson, to a featherweight title rematch with Jose Aldo, or even stepping up to challenge Tyron Woodley for the welterweight strap, but Diaz feels that it’s still a third fight between them that people really want to see.
“People question me, ‘Hey, when you gonna fight No. 3?'” Diaz said. “I know that everybody needs to see that. If I’m gonna do something, that’s what I’m gonna do — but I’m not begging for it. If anybody should be asking for the fight, it should be him. He’s the one that has something to prove.
“Congratulations to Conor. He did a great job, got the two belts — but I just know that me and him both know what happened in [our] fights and that ‘greatest of all time’ stuff [to stop]. I don’t remember any of the greatest of all times getting worked over like [he was] in the last two fights.”
Check out Diaz’s full interview with ESPN’s Brett Okamoto below.
