Nate Diaz should be 2-0 against Conor McGregor, according to his older brother Nick.
You may remember that the more experienced Diaz brother was not permitted to corner Nate during his UFC 202 rematch with ‘The Notorious’.
Nick still had an outstanding payment due to the Nevada State Athletic Commission stemming from his 2015 failed drug test, when the discovery of marijuana metabolites in his system was punished with a five-year ban and a $165,000 fine but, on appeal, that was reduced to 18 months and $100,000.
Nick Diaz will not be allowed to corner his younger brother at UFC 202 https://t.co/U9F1TzZSab
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) August 18, 2016
As of August, when the rematch between Diaz and McGregor took place, Nick still had a balance of $75,000 to pay off and therefore the NAC denied him a corner’s licence.
The Irishman came out on top in his second meeting with Nate Diaz, who had submitted him at UFC 196 five months earlier, but Nick reckons the fight would have gone differently had he been allowed to speak to his brother in between rounds.
“It’s just like one inch. That’s the difference with how that fight could have gone and, as far as I’m concerned, I definitely would have been that inch,” Diaz said on Opie Radio.
“They just wanted to keep me out of there. It would’ve definitely helped him out a lot.
“I was seeing things in that fight that I would have called and told him. I was seeing things that he wasn’t seeing because I do these things and I know how they work out for me. It’s almost like a formula and I’m like ‘This is what you do!’
“Come the third and fourth round, I think if I had been there then we’d have been able to put it together and get that guy out of there.
“Gilbert Melendez was there and the thing is with Melendez, he’s great and he’s really smart. He knows what he’s looking at but they’re training partners so they’re kind of opposites, stylistically, because he’s more of a wrestler who goes on top.
“The things that Gilbert would tell him to do is what Gilbert would do but what I would tell him to do is more of what he would do.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t helping having Gilbert there. Gilbert wasn’t necessarily telling him to do the wrong stuff but he wasn’t going to see the things I was seeing.”
The UFC 202 main event will go down as one of the fights of the year as it descended into a back-and-forth, bloody brawl between two rivals who refused to give up.
But in terms of technique, Nick Diaz witnessed aspects of McGregor’s game that his brother would have been able to exploit but, unfortunately, he wasn’t even in the arena.
“I would have told him not to throw punches at that dude at all because he’s going to sit there and watch you and try to counter everything,” Diaz continued.
“So all you need to do is fake at him, flick at him and fuck with him. And that’s how you do that.
“He went out there and just didn’t have it together in the first round, and I think I could have clicked him into the right mindset.”
The Diaz brothers’ rivalry with the reigning UFC featherweight and lightweight champion looks set to continue, with Nate a very realistic potential next opponent for McGregor in the most anticipated rubber match in UFC history.
Nick, a former Strikeforce welterweight champion, has also accused McGregor of modelling his trash-talk on his own just over a week after attending the Dubliner’s UFC 205 after-party in New York City.
“Conor McGregor has copied my model and mixed it with Floyd (Mayweather),” Diaz said.
“I don’t know how to act like Floyd and be that money guy because I grew up broke and we just don’t act that way.
“I don’t want to act like a douche like that… I never put on an act, I was legitimately pissed off and for reasons.
“I never stepped out of line with anybody. I never do. People just start running their mouths at me and then I call them on it like ‘Yeah motherfucker. You know I worked harder than you!'”
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