Fightweets: Did Nate Diaz help or hurt his cause?

It feels a little weird waking up on the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend and knowing there isn’t a fight card at night, right? Fortunately, there’s an event on Sunday night instead, and the UFC Fight Night 88 bout between Cody Garbrandt and Thoams Almeida promises to be worth the wait.

In the meantime, Nate Diaz spiced up a slow week with a wild appearance on The MMA Hour, so let’s get right into that and whatever else might be on your mind.

The mind of Diaz

@MohammedNk166: Is Nate laying down the blueprint or what? and will the fight happen August 20th?

Diaz’s appearance on a special edition of The MMA Hour certainly spiced up an otherwise slow-ish week, didn’t it? Diaz went over a wide range of topics, from his thoughts on the ludicrous Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor talk, to fighters who don’t battle to get all the money they’re worth, to where things stand on getting the Diaz vs. McGregor rematch made.

If we’ve learned one thing about Diaz in recent weeks, it’s that he knows he’s more than just an interchangeable “B” side in the McGregor equation. Yup, McGregor’s name alone brings a whole lot of eyeballs. But McGregor vs. Rafael dos Anjos sure wasn’t bringing the reported 1.5M pay-per-view buys McGregor-Diaz at UFC 196 pulled, which was a considerably bigger number than McGregor’s fights last year with Chad Mendes or Jose Aldo Jr.

If we’ve learned a second thing about Diaz, it’s that he can clearly state what’s on his mind in a way his older brother Nick has never quite been mastered. One of the most fascinating aspects about the Diaz brothers is they’ve always had gems of truth and wisdom mixed in with their street sense and liberal use of profanity. With Nick, things sometimes get lost in translation as the thoughts travel from his brain to his mouth, leading to rambling monologues. Nate Diaz has no such issues, and it’s become clear that when Nate’s on your TV or laptop screen, it’s appointment viewing.

As for your question on whether the fight gets made in time for UFC 202, which was the proposed date, who knows? But as my man Chuck Mindenhall pointed out, this is the first time we’ve ever seen two stars so publicly work the angles against the UFC leading up to a huge fight, so get some popcorn and enjoy the show before the show.

Urijah Faber, Dominick Cruz, and the WEC

@passionatepatk: It seems that people forgot Faber legit had a title. It’s not a UFC belt but at the time WEC was a real belt.

I wholeheartedly agree. After the WEC bantamweight and featherweight titles got absorbed into the UFC, the fact those belts were the world championships at their respective weight classes during the company’s heyday sort of got lost in the shuffle (something which bugs Cruz, the current UFC and former WEC bantamweight champ, for one).

So yeah, in the buildup to UFC 199 over the …

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