Nate Diaz wasn’t exactly training for a triathlon when he got the call to fight Conor McGregor, according to his conditioning coach.
A lot of people were a bit skeptical when Dana White announced that Diaz would fully fit for UFC 196 after agreeing to fight at a week and a half’s notice. The UFC president claimed that the younger Diaz brother was training for a triathlon at the time.
However, Damian Gonzalez, a pro triathlete who’s worked with the Diaz brothers for six years, told MMA Junkie that this wasn’t exactly the case.
“I think that he told Dana that really just to put them at ease, like, ‘Yeah, we’re in shape. He can’t tell Dana, ‘I’m sitting here on the beach having a cocktail.’ You just can’t say that.”
“So you can look at it that way – he needs to recover from his last fight so he can start training again and triathlon season is coming. So technically, yeah, but not exactly the way everybody spun it.”
"I'm not surprised m***** f******." – Nate Diaz reacts to his win over @TheNotoriousMMA! #UFC196 https://t.co/jSHCUPVmKg
— eir Sport (@eirSport) March 6, 2016
As soon as the fight was booked, Gonzalez immediately got in contact with Diaz to work on his conditioning. He revealed that Diaz, his coaches and pretty much everyone around him were concerned about his fitness, so the battle to get him ready for war had to begin.
“He was going to cram in a lot of work in short time, but he needed to recover from it. Basically what we were doing was shorter workouts, but a lot of workouts throughout the day, doing short duration.”
“But the volume was pretty high, with a lot of intensity and a lot of recovery. They can’t take any illegal supplements; they’re not really into all that stuff, so basically, it’s just, when you’re not working out, you’re recovering.”
The hard hours spent training paid off for Diaz as his gas tank lasted longer than McGregor’s at UFC 196. The Notorious looked gassed after trying to finish the Stockton native in the first round, while Diaz conserved his energy, eventually rocked him with a big left and locked in the submission.
