In a recent interview, Nate Diaz revealed that he was busy training for a triathlon prior to receiving the call from the UFC president Dana White regarding the opportunity to fight MMA featherweight champion Conor McGregor.
“On my worst day, I’ll train for two hours. I don’t have too many hobbies. I’m always working, always training. When I’m eating junk food and partying or whatever you want to call it, I’ll wake up, and I’ll train the next day. It’s been like that since I started. I think I train harder than the hardest workers in the offseason,” Diaz said.
Aside from this, Diaz somehow implied that when fighters don’t get the same publicity or support from the UFC, they need to work extra hard in order to get noticed.
“I’ve got to put in a lot of work, and there ain’t no push, so I’m going to make it mine. I know I’m a better fighter than him,” he said.
Due to the limited time given to Diaz to prepare for the MMA fight, the welterweight veteran wasn’t surprised that he received a lot of damage from McGregor. However, he was certain that it would take a bit time for him to warm him up.
The welterweight veteran also revealed that his game plan was the same as what he did to Kurt Pellegrino back in 2008- to push his opponent more during the second round of the fight.
“I usually don’t get touched by that (left hand), but I knew I was going to start off slow and pick up as I go,” Diaz said.
It wasn’t only Diaz’s attack that changed after the fight is finished. Prior to the fight, Diaz threw some shade at McGregor for boasting his wealth to everybody and the support he gets from the MMA promotion. Now, Diaz somehow took back what he said and realized he really couldn’t blame McGregor for what he had done; McGregor simply took advantage of the opportunity.
“The guy did a great job. Like, if I’m getting all that, too, I’m like, ‘Sorry, everybody, you should have been at the right place, right time.’ I got the chance to take that right place, right time, and I took it as quickly as I could. Because if I passed it up, I was never going to get that,” he said.
After getting past the first round of the MMA fight, Diaz didn’t hesitate to grab the opportunity laid out to him. The result of the fight might have been a surprise for everyone, but he said that he knew he would win the fight even before stepping inside the cage. In fact, he knew that he would be getting the biggest break in his professional career through this fight.
“I was watching his fights, and I was like, he keeps his pressure, and these guys break. And that was the same pressure I keep, only less. The pressure that I put on these people, at a certain point, they just fall off. When you put the UFC roster on the mountain, these guys think they’re tough, and we all run up that mountain, I’ll bet you I’m going to be at the top of that mountain, and probably see my brother up there,” Diaz added.