Bas: Smartest thing for Nate is the ground

UFC Hall of Famer Bas Rutten appeared recently on Submission Radio, and discussed Saturday’s fight between Nate Diaz and Conor McGregor. McGregor is the champ at 145, and had planned to fight Saturday for the 155 title; however, the Irishman requested the the fight be at 170.

Bas did not think this would prove to be an issue.

No, not right now,” he said. “Not the week or 10 days, or how many days he knew before. It’s because now he has enough time and his body can. … he’s going to be very strong, he’s gonna come in like nothing happened. I mean he doesn’t need to diet now. He was talking about steak all day long, but now he can do steak and pastas all day long. He can eat pretty much whatever he wants to make welterweight.

“I think he could have made it easy, you know, because it’s already a heavier weight class for him. You know, maybe he overshot [his weight]. That’s possible too, that he thought, you know, I could do – but then they have to go and they have to get rid of RDA first. That’s a big problem in this whole conspiracy. Because like I said, too many people would know that. So I don’t think so.

Rutten is one of the most knowledgeable figures in the sport, and had some very specific predictions for the fight.

I think McGregor could do it because his hands are just better,” said Bas. “You know, Diaz has good boxing, but more crisp is the McGregor side. Diaz though, with all the submissions he has – way more submissions than [McGregor], I think eleven submissions and four knockouts from what I believe. We did something about it yesterday – so if he can get the fight to the ground, can he do something on the ground with it? Maybe ground and pound into submission, something like that? But that’s only based on that one loss he [Conor McGregor] had against Joe Duffy where he got submitted. Well everybody got submitted who doesn’t understand the ground game. I got submitted.

“After my last loss, I got angry and I vowed never to lose anymore, started training for it and never did. So maybe McGregor was exactly the same. It was in 2010 – I mean we’re talking about almost six years ago and it’s just simply no more, and that’s where the focus shifted, to the ground. And now he’s equally good in both areas, only he didn’t show the ground yet. Because if you look at the [Chad] Mendes fight, people say, ‘yeah he took him down and he didn’t even try to get up,’ I was exactly one of those people. But then you hear later from Dana White that he said before the fight, he says, ‘I will knock Mendes out in the second round’. So now with that conspiracy theory – there’s another one back for you – you go thinking, ‘okay, wait a minute, so you think he was on the ground, just like showing Lorenzo and Dana, like here, I’m not doing anything. I’m just gonna wait till they put me back up and I’m gonna knock him out in the second. I don’t want to do anything’. And then he knocked him out in the second. So we don’t know though if these are mind games or not, and we’re gonna have to figure it out. And I hope that Diaz is in great shape, that he had a full training camp.

“I think the smartest idea for Diaz is to try to see if he can take it to the ground. I totally believe he’s better there, his record shows it also. So he’s a tough guy. I’m not saying that [Diaz doesn’t have good striking], but in boxing-wise, I think McGregor just is a little crisper and he will beat him there.

We don’t know where McGregor’s levels are on the ground. But what we do know, is that his striking is really good. So it’s up to you, you want to fight against a really good striker, or you say, you know what, let’s take him to an area that in the past he’s lost to. He might be very good, but we don’t know that, it’s not checked out yet. Let’s check that out. Let’s see if we can get him on the ground. I know McGregor has great takedown defense, but you know, once in the middle of a brawl, you start bouncing and you start hitting, at that moment in the middle of a slug fest, Diaz decides hey shoot in, he might pull off a takedown. And if that happens, with like two, three minutes left in the round, then we can really see what Conor can do on the ground.

Diaz said recently that he thought everyone in the UFC was on performance enhancing rugs, including McGregor. Rutten disagreed, and, unusually, Rutten offered qualified praise for steroids.

Everybody’s getting tested now,” he said. “And these people [USADA] show up every time, it’s very hard now to cheat. So I don’t believe it. I believe in, once a guy’s caught – yes, then we have proof. Before that, you can’t really never say.

“And some guys, they really look like it, you know. You can tell. And then they get clipped later on and you go, well yeah, that was no-brainer, everybody kind of knew that. But I don’t know. No, McGregor to me, it doesn’t look like it to me. And he doesn’t seem to me to be that guy who does that. I think he’s mentally so strong, he doesn’t need that. That’s what I always said with the steroids.

It is good to use, trust me. Not when you’re competing. But if you have an injury, you want to recoup faster and the doctor says it’s gonna be three months instead of six months, by all means, do it. Just make sure it’s out of your system.

“I don’t have anything against [steroids]. They never killed anybody. They only helped people. If you think about it, if you really break it down, it only helped people – that’s alcohol and drugs, that’s what the other things do. But if you do it correctly, it should help a person.

“So I think that once you start fighting and you use steroids, I think something’s mentally…you’re already giving up. You’re already figuring ‘other people are stronger than me, I need to be stronger, I need’…you know, there’s something mentally wrong and I don’t think a real fighter should be like that. And I think that Conor McGregor, in his mind, he’s a true fighter.