Nick Diaz’s long-time coach Cesar Gracie has revealed that he’s not currently coaching the veteran star ahead of his latest comeback fight against Vicente Luque at UFC On ABC 7 in Abu Dhabi on August 3rd, and like many other observers he appears to be baffled by the match-up.
“I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, that wasn’t my idea,” Gracie said of the decision to have Diaz return after an almost three-year absence to fight a ranked opponent in Luque. “If I was advising Nick, I wouldn’t have advised him to do that fight. It’s [also] in Abu Dhabi, I wouldn’t advise to go fight overseas at this point.
“Luque is a very tough guy, Nick is a tough guy, but it just doesn’t make that much sense for me where Nick is at in his career; I don’t know, it’s not the fight I would have made, and I don’t even know what’s going on with that fight to be honest with you.”
Gracie went on to say he still keeps in contact with Diaz on a regular basis, but by the sound of things he doesn’t appear convinced that the star is getting the kind of training he needs for what will be only his 2nd fight in the past 9-and-a-half years.
“I haven’t been part of his training for this one, we [me and Nick] talk every day, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with that to be honest with you, it’s a tossup what’s going to happen…
“The camp, our camp in general we haven’t been as involved like we are with other stuff. I know he’s lost a lot of weight and everything, but I don’t really see him training with fighters.”
“…Nick in general after the Anderson Silva thing, there was a lot of changes. I think what happened was when the commission took him out for years for the weed ban thing, whatever they were doing, I think that kind of threw him for a loop.
“He wasn’t in the gym because there was no reason for being in the gym so suddenly, he wasn’t hanging out with people from the gym, and you know it’s tough to be a guy like Nick Diaz. He’s such an icon of the sport, he’s so famous and everybody wants a piece of him.”
“Normally right now he’d be training with Jake Shields, he’d be training with his brother, he would have been sparring [Nate] – Nick was not there last night for example for Nate’s fight,” referencing Nate’s recent decision win in boxing over Jorge Masvidal.
“No bad blood or anything whatsoever, it’s just I think that the people that are holding on to Nick right now in Texas want to hold on to Nick.
“I hope they take good care of him. That’s all I could say you know.”
