Morning Report: Nate Diaz’s coach blames Diaz’s loss on injuries, says Diaz and McGregor have ‘unfinished business’

At UFC 202, Nate Diaz and Conor McGregor did battle in a rematch of their fight at UFC 196 with McGregor getting his revenge by winning a majority decision. In the aftermath of the fight, Diaz almost immediately began campaigning for a third fight between the two, but UFC President Dana White was adamant that a trilogy fight would not be next. Perhaps in light of this, Diaz stated that he is in “no hurry” for a rematch with McGregor, in part because he feels he won their second encounter as well.

But with the futures of both fighters still up in the air after their epic rematch, it seems the Diaz camp intends to renew its efforts to get a third fight between the two. Speaking with Submission Radio recently, Diaz’s boxing coach Richard Perez outlined why he believes running the third fight back is the best course of action for the UFC.

“You know and I know and the media knows that it was such an awesome fight, I mean, it was like a storm. Everybody’s telling me, I wanna see that again. They want to see that again. That’s gonna be the most big payday for both of them, and for the business, the new UFC people that own it. So if they’re smart enough, they would do it. They will set that up. There’s nobody else. If Nathan goes and fights B.J. Penn or Georges St-Pierre or anyone like that, or even if McGregor (fights them), that’s not gonna be a money-maker. Because those guys haven’t fought in a long time and they’re not action fighters like Nathan fighting McGregor. If anything, Georges St-Pierre will take him to the ground and just hold him and just wrestle him around. And then he’ll probably beat him up because McGregor’s not good on the ground, so he’ll probably tap him out.

“If I was the UFC owner, I would say let’s do No. 3 again. After that, he can go back to 145 if he wants, or 155. That’s where they’re fighting at, 155 – which is good if they fight at 155, because if Nathan wins he can go for the belt. But that’s not what he wants. Just like McGregor, they want the money. They want paydays.”

While a Diaz trilogy fight would undoubtedly do big business and is something McGregor has personally shown interest in, it is also not the only big money fight available to the Irish superstar. In fact, there are no shortage of names available for the featherweight champion including current UFC lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez who has been adamant about wanting to fight McGregor.

But the Diaz camp isn’t only interested in the McGregor rematch because of money, but because they believe Diaz won the second fight as well, and did so despite suffering some injuries during his training camp which they say severely impeded him come fight night.

“They were bad. The knee was bad and the ribs were bad because when he hurt his knee, he couldn’t run. So then when it got a little better, he wanted to start sparring. And he’s not in shape because he wasn’t really doing much. You know, you work on a little bit of mitts and you work a little bit of sparring and he got better and better. And then when he got (Alan) Sanchez in there, he went a good four hard rounds and he was doing real good, but he was getting a little tired, and that’s when Sanchez caught him in the rib and that then put him out there for a while.

“So he can’t back out of the fight. And so I know that if he wouldn’t have been injured, McGregor would have gotten stopped again and Nathan wouldn’t have got hit as much as he did in that first round this last time. Because he was really sharp. He was sparring with guys McGregor’s size, really good boxers and he was whooping on them. So that’s why I knew it wouldn’t happen that way. But it did, and it came out as the best fight of the night. But he got cut, you know, and if there would have been another 30 seconds, he would have tapped him out, cause McGregor was ready to go anyway.”

While these injuries were severe enough to seriously affect his training, Diaz refused to withdraw from the bout because, according to …

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