UFC President Dana White’s patience with controversial lightweight Nate Diaz appears to be wearing thin as the former title contender continues to cause problems while also slumping to his third loss in four fights this past weekend at UFC On FOX 13.
“I think Nate is in this position where he needs to go home, heal up and decide what he wants to do,” White said at the UFC On FOX 13 post-fight press conference after watching Diaz get handed the most one-sided defeat of his career against Rafael dos Anjos. “Does he want to get serious and come in here and try to take a run? Or does he want to retire?”
Traditionally Nate has caused less problems for the UFC than his older brother Nick, but over the past year it seems like he’s been doing his best to change that.
It all started when Diaz became disgruntled with his salary not long after his team-mate Gilbert Melendez secured a major new deal with the promotion which meant that even in defeat a week ago at UFC 181, ‘El Nino’ still banked a $200,000 basic salary.
Meanwhile, Diaz, who won TUF season 5 and has fought 20 times for the promotion, compiling a 12-8 record, headlining several shows and fighting for the title along the way, only took home $60,000 at the weekend.
There’s certainly a case to be made that Diaz should be getting paid more, but unfortunately with the UFC not being receptive to renegotiating his contract which had only been agreed upon in 2013, the 29 year-old has found himself in an awkward spot and appears to have only made matters worse for himself by digging his heels in and trying to fight the system.
For instance, he repeatedly turned down opportunities to fight for the best part of the year which must have hurt him financially, then he risked losing his job by failing to turn up for certain media obligations during fight week as well as being critical of the promotion’s new sponsorship deal amongst other things, and to cap it all off he came in over 4lbs beyond the lightweight limit at Friday’s weigh-ins which resulted in a fine worth 20% of his purse.
Losing on Saturday night effectively shuts down any glimmer of hope he may have had about convincing the UFC to renegotiate his deal and from the sounds of things the promotion aren’t going to release him from his current contract – no doubt at least partly due to the fact that they wouldn’t want a marketable fighter like Diaz signing up for rival promotion Bellator who are on the rise at the moment.
Despite acknowledging post-fight that he needs to keep competing in order to pay his bills, judging by his latest Twitter post it seems like Diaz is still refusing to play the game – posting a picture of what looks like a spliff along with the message, “P.O.W”.
