Former UFC lightweight contender Nate Diaz is not a happy man, at least when it comes to what he’s getting paid by the UFC. Remember a couple months back when he requested to be let out of his UFC contract via Twitter? He hasn’t said much since then, but today broke his silence on what that was all about — and as we suspected, he got a whiff of what his teammate Gilbert Melendez is making in his new renegotiated contract.
In an interview with MMAFighting.com, Nate said:
“I don’t get paid sh*t, and I’m about to tell the world. I didn’t like what my brother and my partners got paid. Now that they got a better contract, which still ain’t sh*t, it blows what I get out of the water. And they deserve triple what they get. I’ve been in the UFC for eight years and never turned down a fight. It’s not like I’m getting paid 20 bucks an hour and they’re getting 50 bucks an hour. I’m getting 20 bucks an hour and they’re getting paid 15,000 bucks an hour. They blow me out the water. At this point, I can’t even go to lunch with my partners because if we start talking about contracts or our business, I don’t have anything but bitter sh*t to say. We’re entertaining entertainers. We get Shaq, Justin Bieber and Lil’ Jon at the show. How are we entertaining billionaires and we can’t even get sh*t?
There’s another reason Diaz is in need of more money too:
“If I can get released, I can go fight somewhere and make some money. If they can renegotiate, I can make some money, because right now I’m broke. For some reason, the IRS is telling me that I owe them more money than I have right now, and I pay my taxes every year.”
At least Nate is saying he’s paid something with his taxes. Hopefully he learned from his brother’s MISTAKE.
UFC President Dana White has responded to Nate Diaz’s monetary complaints:
“He was happy as can be when he signed his new deal. Go back and look at my twitter after he signed the new deal. I tweeted it. He was happy. We’ve done everything to honor the contract. I’ve always been good to Diaz. This is the kind of craziness you see with athletes. They end up spinning off and don’t make the money they should have made. Nate Diaz has what it takes to be champion or he doesn’t, but I’ll tell you, there’s only one way to find out. He has to come back and fight. He thinks he loses to two of the best guys in the world and deserves more money? In what f*cking planet does that make sense?”
Diaz feels a billion dollar company should be paying its fighters more, yet, he signed the contract. One can certainly understand his frustration though if he starts comparing paydays with the likes of Melendez. We don’t know the exact amount of that contract, but it obviously upset Diaz enough to go public. $60,00 to show and $60,000 to win is certainly nothing to snuff at, and that’s what Diaz said he is currently making. If he wants more, he needs to keep winning I guess. Whaddaya gonna do? Historically, bitching publicly about pay in the UFC hasn’t produced any positive results that I can recall. Let the managers handle this stuff.
What are your thoughts?
Read Diaz’s entire interview and White’s full response over at www.mmafighting.com.
[ads1]
[ads2]