Nate Diaz is one of my personal favorite fighters in the UFC. He has a tremendous amount of respect for the game, an unbelievable work ethic, a pretty fantastic record, and also seems to be damn near impossible to knock out. I have also never seen the man get tired and cuts don't seem to bother him at all.
When Conor McGregor was rising up in the ranks and bypassing fighters ahead of him in the rankings, Diaz called him out for "ruining everything there is about this sport." This was due to the fact that Diaz believed, and I do to, that a big part of the reason why Conor was getting the big fights was because he was really good at cutting promos and bashing his opponents on Twitter. Of course later Conor would prove that he was able to actually back up his smack talk, especially when he KO'd then undefeated for 10 years champ Jose Aldo. Jose hasn't been able to recover from this embarrassing defeat and has been relegated to the point of near non-issue status.
When McGregor and Poirier had their epic fight this past weekend, I don't think very many people saw it getting finished so quickly. In my mind, the whole reason this fight even happened was a setup to lure Khabib back into the sport and in order for that to happen McGregor, and his big mouth, needed to rise to the occasion and win - which of course he did not. Poirier completely outclassed Conor and "The Notorious One" looked as though he wasn't properly prepared for the match.
Poirier also has recently (in terms of MMA fighting anyway) fought and lost to Khabib - this time by submission in the 3rd round. This was back in 2019 but that is not a terribly long time in UFC terms. Since there wasn't a lot of trash talking going on between those two and Dustin took the loss on the chin with grace, Khabib probably doesn't feel compelled to come out of his "retirement" to face this guy - nor would Dana White be terribly interested in it because it didn't pull big numbers in 2019 and these days, with almost no crowds allowed, it would pull even less.
So the next obvious step in my mind was to look to Nate Diaz, who has faced both McGregor twice and was scheduled to fight Dustin in the past but the fight never took place. Nate hasn't even fought since November of 2019 in the ill-fated "BMF" fight that had a controversial loss attributed to Diaz because he was cut very badly. You can't knock the guy out, but he bleeds very easily.
Dana White has zero love for the Diaz brothers and despite the fact that Nate has performed very well in the UFC, he doesn't even appear in the top 15 in the lightweight division and his profile is something you have to search for pretty hard to even realize that he is in the UFC at all.
The public feels differently though and I think there is a chance that we will see a potential Diaz fight, presuamably with McGregor in the future. They do have a trilogy to finish off after all.
Anyway, Diaz wasn't pressed for comment after the fight and he probably wouldn't have answered even even they wanted to talk to him, but he took to Twitter to say something very small about the fight this past weekend.
Myself, and a lot of other people that enjoy this sport thought this was hilarious and is just so "Diaz-ish" of a statement. The man is excellent at this game and is clearly dedicated to it but he doesn't really seem to even try to promote himself or pressure the industry to give him fights based on how he runs his mouth. I think I respect him a great deal more because of that.
Ironically, this lack of response in regards to the recent fight, where his name was mentioned many times both before and after it, might be exactly the sort of response that generates the buzz necessary to get him back on a main card later on in this year. I certainly hope so.