- Nick Diaz | Photo: Strikeforce / Esther Lin
October 19, 2011 – The proverbial revolving door surround the UFC 137 main event came around full circle with yesterday’s confirmation that Georges St. Pierre has withdrawn from the event due to a knee injury sustained in training.
The early stage planning for UFC 137 initially had the UFC’s welterweight champ facing off against Nick Diaz in a landmark “champion vs. champion” matchup after the reigning Strikeforce 170 champ was pulled from the Zuffa sister organization with a multi-fight, multi-year contract this past summer.
It was to be a perfect pairing of popular pugilists until everything changed when the Stockton “bad boy” no-showed two UFC press conferences to announce the event in Toronto and Las Vegas in early September, forcing the UFC brass to shuffle the main event.
“I’d had my reservations about Nick Diaz for a long time,” UFC President Dana White said during the press conference in which Diaz was absent. “You’ve heard me use the term ‘play the game.’ All I asked him for was this much. When he signed, I said, ‘Let me tell you what kid, add up all the purses of you career, this will be biggest fight of your life.’ You have the opportunity to fight GSP and win the welterweight title. But I need you to do certain things.”
Failing to live up to that commitment, Nick Diaz was immediately pulled from the main event fight and replaced with Carlos Condit, who was scheduled to face BJ Penn at the same event.
While the punishment of losing “main event money” must have stung for the Stockton native, Diaz found consolation and a second chance at UFC life so-to-speak when he rescheduled in the UFC 137 co-main event with BJ, who was left opponent-less after Condit’s main event elevation.
Fast forward one month later and Nick Diaz is BACK at the top of the card courtesy of St. Pierre’s injury.
He spoke about the lead up to UFC 137 and his matchup with former training partner BJ Penn during this afternoon’s UFC 137 media press conference.
- BJ Penn | Photo: UFC / Kevin Lynch
“Of course I have regret,” Nick said when asked how he felt about no longer fighting GSP for the title. “I have people that are supposed to take care of stuff, like I got a lawyer or something right, that’s supposed to get paid 100 grand, a ridiculous amount of money. I’ve been living the same since I started since I was 17. I lived down the street from my parents, who I used to live in the same house with, now I live with my brother. I’ve got all these people, business people, and big money people around me trying to make deals. I don’t know anything about that. All I know, somebody’s getting paid over 100 grand just to tell me what I’m supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do. I think for that much money I think I could have had somebody standing around telling me ‘hey, you can’t miss this press conference.
I’ve done my best to try not to focus on all that other stuff going on and try to live every day like it’s not a big deal because it’s not going to make a difference whether I whine about it. I’m just going to do what I do and that’s train until it’s time to fight. That’s my job, to fight when I’m told to fight. Everything else is going to be a whole other task than fighting or training itself. I’m training to be the best in the world.”
Looking ahead to October 29th, Nick isn’t exactly thrilled that he has to fight BJ Penn instead given that they consider each other friends but he’ll do what he’s paid to do.
“I’m not happy about it at all, to be fighting my friend, but I’m going to deal with it. It doesn’t make it any easier for me to fight people I already know or have trained with. It’s a shady feeling going into fights like that but I’m just doing what my manager says.
I would have preferred to fight GSP because I’d be fighting for the title. I think I have the right skills and the right tools to do the job in that fight. Georges comes out and he’s a little bigger than BJ so he was able to stall through the rounds but I don’t think he’d be able to do that to me so that would have been interesting but this one is a completely different fight. I think BJ is a lot better fighter to be honest with you. On a technical level, I think he’s a much better fighter than GSP all around. This fight can go anywhere. Anything can happen.”
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