Nate Diaz feels like his toes have been stepped on.
The UFC 196 main card fighter says he has been talking trash, talking martial arts and, yes, talking money long before anyone in that business had even heard the five-syllable name of a notorious Dublin man.
The American feels like he was kept down though. He feels like they didn’t want him getting too big and, whilst he admits that he likes what McGregor does, he’s not happy with the push that the Irish man gets. Especially because he thinks it’s to do with where the featherweight champion comes from.
“The way he’s been saying he’s the money fight, I’ve been saying that forever too but they got wind of that and they tried to shut me up,” Diaz said at his open workout in Las Vegas.
“They tried to put me in the shadows and be like ‘hey, keep that big money fight shit on the low.’ When he says it, it’s this new thing.
“As far as preaching martial arts and who are the real fighters, I’ve already been talking that before he was in the UFC. Now he’s like this new guy with all this new stuff coming out and everybody’s pushing it, it’s on every article, every headline, because he’s from Ireland.”
Hey, hey, hey – was that racially motivated?
Doubtful, but terms like that still haven’t left the build-up to this welterweight clash.
He didn’t seem too bothered. He does think, however, that being Irish has helped Conor McGregor’s rise. Even after he disposed of Jose Aldo like he did.
Hardly racially motivated, that.
It was suggesting a bit of positive discrimination or marketing discrimination, whatever the hell it was. We wonder will TMZ get wind of it and put it to Diaz. Even reporters who ask who’d win a fight between Jesus and McGregor have the neck to go down the racist route.
Remember that @TMZ reporter that asked Conor McGregor about Jesus?
Well, Conor met him again
Here's how that went pic.twitter.com/UBRuwUdCeT
— MMA History Today (@MMAHistoryToday) February 25, 2016
Clips via MMA Junkie.