Nick Diaz was almost a no-show on today’s UFC 137 conference call, a move that could possibly have had dire consequences considering he was recently stripped of a title shot after failing to board a plane to Canada to attend a press conference to promote a main event bout against welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre.
After media members began tweeting that Diaz was not on the call, UFC President Dana White tweeted, “I’m hearing UFC dropped the ball on the Nick Diaz no show today!! SUCKS.” Fortunately, a few minutes later Diaz called in and said he did not even know there was a call scheduled for today.
After a few minutes of stating his case on why he was late, Diaz explained he came to the UFC to fight for the title and would much rather be fighting welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre than B.J. Penn. However, he does feel this is a much tougher fight for him.
“I think B.J. is a lot better fighter to be honest with you [than GSP], on the technical standpoint. He’s much better at jiu-jitsu, boxing. I don’t think he should fight at this weight. I don’t think he looked so great in his last fight for whatever reason at 155 pounds. I think he’s a much better fighter than GSP all-around.”
When asked if he regretted not getting the title fight with St-Pierre because he did not get on a plane, Diaz said of course he regrets it but then blamed it on the fact no one explained to him the significance of the press conference and he might be stripped of his title shot if he missed it.
“Well, yeah of course I have regret. I have regret that I have people that are supposed to take care of stuff. I got like a lawyer or something, right, I’m supposed to pay someone a hundred grand, I don’t know, a ridiculous amount of money. … I’ve got all these big money people around me trying to make deals. I don’t know anything about that. All I know is somebody’s getting paid over a hundred grand just to tell me what I’m supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do. And I’m like for that much money I think I could have somebody standing around telling me, ‘Hey you can’t miss this press conference, that voids the whole contract and then you’re out. You ain’t getting [expletive], you ain’t fighting [expletive], you ain’t making no money. So you have to be at this thing.’ It’s simple.”
The following clip is Nick Diaz on Wednesday’s UFC 137 conference call:
If you want to listen to Wednesday’s entire UFC 137 conference call, you can do that here: UFC 137 conference call with Penn, Diaz, Kongo, Mitrione.