It wasn’t that long ago when Brendan Schaub thought that Conor McGregor vs Nate Diaz III would be the biggest fight in UFC history.
When it was announced that Conor McGregor would be taking on Floyd Mayweather in his professional boxing debut, Brendan Schaub was everywhere.
The former UFC heavyweight was part of Showtime’s broadcast team for ‘the Money Fight’ and after the fight was over, he had a run-in with McGregor rival Diaz backstage.
Once he saw the Stockton native, he thought he would lend him a hand on how to sell the trilogy against McGregor which, at the time, he thought would be the ‘biggest fight in UFC history.’ However, the meeting turned sour once Diaz disagreed with Schaub’s view of the fight and their subsequent altercation went viral.
Remarkable https://t.co/KbP5wlhScD
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 18, 2017
Diaz felt that Schaub was being too generous in his assessment of McGregor’s performance, claiming that he only won the early rounds because Mayweather ‘wasn’t trying’ to win them. After Schaub told him that he thought he was ‘off on this one,’ Diaz flipped him the bird and said ‘fuck you!’
Flash-forward a month later and Schaub has changed his tune about the potentially PPV record-breaking trilogy. On a recent episode of The Fighter and the Kid podcast, he claimed that the fans had lost interest in the fight.
“I don’t feel like there’s any demand for Conor vs Nate. Coz Nate’s not a title-holder. He’s not ranked in the top three, four or five.”
We don’t know about that. The incredible success of their first two fights coupled with how closely-fought the sequel leads us to believe the masses would still splash out on a rubber match.
