Following Nick Diaz’s second round stoppage of Frank Shamrock on Strikeforce’s “Shamrock vs. Diaz” card which was broadcast live on Showtime on April 11th, the Stockton bad boy called out professional boxing legend Roy Jones Jr. in a boxing match.
Diaz is not the first MMA fighter to call out Jones Jr.. UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva has been wanting to fight the former Ring Magazine pound for pound boxing champion for years. However, UFC President Dana White has made it perfectly clear, as long as Anderson Silva is under contract with the UFC, he will not be allowed to have a professional boxing match with Roy Jones Jr.
Roy Jones Jr. recently said he would even be willing to come into Silva’s world and meet him inside the UFC Octagon for an MMA fight! Once again White shot the match down and said the the fight would “make some money,” but it would “hurt MMA in the long run,” and “it’s not what we do.”
Freak show or not, when it comes to the possibility of Nick Diaz meeting Roy Jones Jr. in an MMA match inside the Strikeforce cage, the promotion’s CEO Scott Coker is extremely open to the idea, “We would absolutely set this fight up. Of course we would have to run it by Showtime for final approval, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t have this fight.”
What made the Anderson Silva vs. Roy Jones Jr. match-up so appealing, whether in a boxing ring or in an MMA cage, is the fact you have two fighters who have been named the pound-for-pound best in the world in their respective sports.
Nick Diaz has never held such accolades, not even close, so that certainly takes some of the luster out of the match-up, and very likely could take Roy Jones Jr.’s desire out of a potential match-up as well.
By: Jack Bratcher
is this accurate?
i thought i read someone else high up at strikeforce (hecklemen?) said this fight was a very long shot, and also that scott coker backed off on his initial statement about the fight in a later press conference.