Nate Diaz won’t be fighting for a title at UFC 219.
Back when the promotion was finding it tough to book a main event for their end-of-year show, rumours of a welterweight title fight between Tyron Woodley and Nate Diaz began gathering momentum.
Had Diaz been booked to fight for the lightweight strap, fans would have probably complained. However, the Stockton native is even more undeserving of a crack at the 170lbs belt considering he is 3-3 in the weight class with his only wins coming against two fighters who are now retired and one who, like himself, is a natural lightweight.
A women’s featherweight title fight between defending champion Cristiane ‘Cyborg’ Justino and former women’s bantamweight queen Holly Holm will fill the headliner slot and as Dana White explained during Tuesday’s media scrum, the Diaz vs. Woodley fight was never on the cards.
White claims that Diaz has turned down multiple fight offers since dropping that majority decision to Conor McGregor, but the Woodley fight wasn’t one of them. According to the UFC president, this was just a rumour that was started by a member of the promotion’s legal team.
“First of all, let me just say this. I don’t even count that one. Don’t even count that he turned down Woodley. One of our attorneys here started playing matchmaker and said he has a good rapport with the Diaz brothers and he basically said, ‘what if you could fight Tyron Woodley?’ Me and Sean (Shelby) were like, ‘How does he deserve to fight Tyron Woodley? There’s a fucking list of guys that are waiting to fight Tyron Woodley and this dude’s gonna fight… what are you talking about?'”
One of the reasons why these rumblings really took off was how Woodley reacted to them. ‘The Chosen One’ announced that he had signed a contract to fight Diaz on the card, but according to White, this wasn’t the case at all.
“So he kind of went off the reservation a little bit and started playing matchmaker. That’s why you started hearing Woodley saying ‘I got offered a fight with Nate Diaz’ and we’re like, ‘No, there was never a fight.’ That’s the deal. So there really was never an offer for Woodley vs. Diaz. It’s not true. No, not officially, it was never offered.
“One of our lawyers was like, ‘Hey, would you fight?’ because we’re always offering the Diaz brothers a fight. So he says, ‘Well, what about Woodley? Would you fight Woodley?’ And then he says to Woodley, ‘Would you fight Nate Diaz?’ Woodley’s been talking about, ‘I need shoulder surgery. I need shoulder surgery.’ and then he’s like, ‘I’ll fight Nate Diaz’ and starts calling him out and shit.’ It was a nightmare. None of that was true.”
We don’t think anybody will be losing sleep over this fight being ‘lost’. A Nate Diaz return would be awesome, a welterweight title fight would be great, but together in the same fight… not so much.
