Praise doesn’t coming much higher than this.
Former WBC and WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward is a huge fan of the Diaz brothers’ boxing skills, particularly Nate’s.
An interview with the undefeated pugilist from 2014 in which he praises Diaz’s boxing skills has been doing the rounds on the internet following the announcement that Nate will be fighting Conor McGregor at UFC 196. Ward believes that the Diaz brothers have very different boxing styles, but Nate is more skillful on the feet.
“Nick is more, ‘hit me with your best shot, and I’m coming with my best shot.’ Nate’s a little bit more of a skillful volume puncher, different angles and stuff like that. He was one of my main guys when I fought Chad Dawson.”
“Those guys got great stand up and they’d be able to compete… I don’t know how far they’d go in the pro ranks, but those guys could compete in boxing.”
One of the main criticisms of Diaz’s stand up is that he lacks knockout power, but Ward doesn’t believe that’s an issue, particularly in MMA.
“Obviously the jiu-jitsu and the other stuff they do is great but, those boys got hands and a lot of their fights are ended with head shots.”
“It don’t matter (that they don’t have power), it’s volume. They wear what 6, 5, 4 oz gloves? You don’t need a whole lot of power with that and volume. If a grown man hits another grown man in the head 15 or 20 times, you’re going to hurt the guy.”
Check out Ward talking about the Diaz brothers’ boxing skills in the video embedded below from around the 2:11 mark.
