Richard Perez was fully certain that Nate Diaz just beat Conor McGregor for the second time in five months.
But he was just as sure that Diaz’s hand was not going to be raised when the judges’ scorecards were read out by Bruce Buffer.
Perez, Diaz’s boxing coach, has been in the corner for a lot of fights and he believed, after the final buzzer rang out in the T-Mobile Arena on August 20, that he knew the fight game well enough to foresee how things were going to play out.
After watching the UFC 202 main event, both live and when he got back to the fighter hotel, Perez scored the grudge rematch for his fighter.
“I thought he [Diaz] did good,” Perez told Submission Radio. “I thought he won [rounds] 3, 4 and 5. I went back and watched it again and I thought he beat him.
“You can’t win a round by running and sure McGregor threw a lot of kicks in the first round. The second was pretty close, I gave it to McGregor but 3, 4 and 5 – no!”
So if he was so confident that the Stockton fighter won the fight by a margin of three rounds to two, why was Perez expecting McGregor to be announced the victor?
He explained that he felt that the massive payday that would accompany a rubber match between McGregor and Diaz was at play and that the UFC may have relayed to the judges their desire for the series to be tied at 1-1, rather than see their biggest cash cow defeated in back-to-back bouts.
“I feel that Nathan did [win] but I knew they were going to give it to McGregor,” Perez said. “I just felt that they were and I knew that at the end, when Nathan asked me, I said ‘well they’re going to give it to McGregor’. Because I figured they’re going to want the third fight but I felt that McGregor didn’t win that fight. A lot of people know that.
“I felt that they did give it to him so that they could have a third.”
“I watched it like five times already,” Perez continued. “The judges were going for McGregor. You could tell, it was obvious.
“I figured – OK they want a third fight. A company just bought it out and they want to make more money. They just bought the UFC. If I bought the UFC, I would try to make it as best I can to get a third fight.
“Doesn’t that make sense? To make more money? That’s a moneymaker right there. That’s a big moneymaker, more than any other fight that’s happening now. It would be smart to make a third fight.”
