The Man’s got a point
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” – I ponder this quote from Albert Einstein a lot. It often times comes up in life but no time more than on the aftermath of the Nate Diaz, Conor McGregor fight. It seems as if the whole world has gone crazy about Conor’s lost but not exactly in the way that you’d think. Yes there’s some haters out there saying that Conor’s finished, but not anybody who truly knows the sport. The crazy I’m talking about is everyone going “goo goo ga ga” about how Conor lost like a champion. Don’t get me wrong, he was definitely humble in defeat, and by all accounts the man is a good guy, but sometimes it feels like everybody wanna act like they forgot about Nate.
“I feel like, honest, I feel like the UFC wants to weed me the f— out of this position,” Diaz told ESPN.com. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that. Sorry. I feel like a lot of people are coming at me now. I see them making a lot of excuses for him, and I think it’s kind of ridiculous. “I don’t think it’s just the UFC. It’s everybody. People are saying, ‘Oh, [McGregor] is great, he’s accepted the loss so well.’ If I would have lost, people would be saying, ‘piece of s— shouldn’t have accepted the fight.’ I don’t mean to be bitter, but there are a lot of excuses being made for this guy. He’s talking about winning the first round. There are five rounds in a fight. Who gives a s— if you won a round? You lost.”
Let’s breakdown the scenario shall we? Conor McGregor is a 145 who goes Auschwitz in order to make weight . He should probably be fighting at lightweight which he was planning to do until Dos Anjos pulled out. If he would’ve fought Dos Anjos and won, I would assume he would’ve stayed at that weight class. Nate Diaz fights at lightweight, he’s taken a couple fights at 170 but has been steadily fighting at 155 for a while now without a hitch. So in my mind essentially what we had was two lightweights fighting at a catchweight. Conor had a full training camp but Nate Diaz came off of partying on the beaches of Cabo to answer the call 8 days out. That’s insane. So if you ask me the conditioning differences due to lack of training should even out the weight discrepancy. Conor was used to “knocking out midgets”, that’s not Nate’s fault. He took the fight, didn’t let Conor get in his head, took the shots, and won. No excuses, no pampering, Conor fought a not so smart fight and lossed, badly. So why is everybody still talking about Conor. He didn’t do any heroic feat, he just bit of more than he could chew, I do it all the time. I appreciate his courageousness/craziness for entertainment value but really, he didn’t do anything that great in my opinion.
“I made a good amount of money,” Diaz said. “I think they’re over exaggerating how much — I don’t feel like anybody did me any favors, I’ll tell you that much — but I made a good chunk of change and I’m grateful. I’ve been demanding that. “I was screwed for a long time. My problem was I was a soldier for a long time. I never even considered money, it was more about not getting my ass whooped. Once I thought about it for two minutes, I realized I was getting f—ed. It was stupid not to pay attention to that the whole time. If I had been thinking business since I was 21, I’d be a rich man right now.”
As far as what’s next for the other guy (Nate Diaz), who only beat the second coming of an MMA “God” by rear naked choke in the 2nd round, he’s looking for a big fight.
“I’m thinking probably the lightweight title fight, whatever is biggest,” Diaz said. “The biggest thing with Lawler and GSP — I would have been all about those fights and I am, but at the same time, my brother [Nick] is coming back and those are his fights. Those are Nick Diaz fights. I’m not trying to step on his shoes. We’ll see how things play out. As far as rematches go, I lost close decisions and never got a rematch. “I’m not asking for anything. I’m demanding more than everybody. I want more than everybody, straight up. Money talks. I want the biggest fight. Whoever I’ve got to fight — the biggest show, biggest payday — that’s what I want.”
Maybe I am missing something but I think Nick has a point. I am sure if you go through any fight camp you can see a reason for a loss, Chris Weidman just came out and said he was 10-20% when he fought Luke Rockhold who had a very real staph infection. My point is shoulda, coulda, woulda – at the end of the day Conor was already talking about going up to 170 and fighting the champ Robbie Lawler so it’s not like it came out of nowhere. Sure he went up faster than planned but that was his choice, he’s a grown adult who knew what he was getting into. Whether it was because he didn’t want to lose a big payday or he really thought he could win, he took the fight and lossed. No excuses. Congrats to Nate and the “scrap pack”, your mental fortitude is second to none. What do you think about Conor’s “heroic loss”? Did Conor just have too much against him or is Nate just the better fighter? Hit us up below with all of your thoughts and comments.
