Nate Diaz has offered a scathing assessment of his rival Conor McGregor’s performance against Floyd Mayweather in the boxing ring late last month.
“He punched himself out the same way he lost in the Ufc there was no learning goin on,” Diaz wrote on Twitter. “#overpromotion bullshit get off the nuts this the shit I’m talking about Bruce Lee would’ve never lost like that. #realninjashit”
Diaz’s remarks come at a time when it’s believed that if McGregor opts to return to the Octagon for his next fight then it could well be for a trilogy fight with the Stockton native.
As Diaz referenced in his message, he was able to capitalize on ‘The Notorious’ gassing out in the second round of their short-notice first encounter at 170lbs last year, leading to a rear-naked choke submission, though the Irishman did emerge with a majority decision in their rematch a few months later.
The two fights did a combined total of over three million pay-per-view buys and made them both rich, so it’s easy to see why they would be eager to run it back again, though this time the promotion would have to dig much deeper into their pockets in order to pay them what they now believe they are worth.
McGregor reportedly earned a guaranteed $30 million for his fight with Mayweather and is likely to have banked somewhere in the region of $70 – £100 million in total once pay-per-view revenue, sponsorship and mercandise is factored into the equation, so he’ll be requiring far more than the $3 million guaranteed sum he received for his UFC 202 fight with Diaz in 2016.
At the same time, Diaz also believes he’s now worth far more than the career record $2 million he negotiated for their rematch, with his boxing coach recently stating that his fight purse demands could now rise to as much as $20 million.
There are no shortage of other fights for McGregor in the Octagon as both Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov are champing at the bit to get their hands on him, while welterweight champion Tyron Woodley would no doubt be only too happy to take the challenge if McGregor fancied stepping back up to 170lbs.
Diaz is more of a known quantity for McGregor though, and if he continues to talk trash like this then it’s hard to see ‘The Notorious’ looking elsewhere for his next fight in the Octagon.
