Nick Diaz was of course scheduled to fight for the title vs Welterweight Georges St-Pierre, but was pulled from the fight for failing media duties, and relegated to the undercard, a move that Dave Meltzer estimates cost him around $2,000,000 that he would have realized from a cut of PPV sales. Then GSP injured his leg in training, and Diaz was back in the main event, now vs. BJ Penn. Nick Diaz’s trainer and manager Cesar Gracie tells the Sherdog Radio Network’s Rewind show that Diaz’s UFC contract wasn’t set up to compensate him adequately for headlining in a non title fight.
What happened,” Gracie argues, “is you can’t pull a guy off a card and then bring him back on: ‘Oh, he’s not good enough to fight. We pulled him out of the card. He can’t be in the main event. Yeah, here you go. Oh, wait a minute, guess what happened? Our little star guy over here, his knee hurts. Oh my God, we need Nick Diaz. Let’s put him back in the main event.’ Everybody wants to see that fight. He delivers. Well, little star guy didn’t fight and Nick Diaz did, but they pulled a lot of money from Nick’s purse because it wasn’t structured for him to make as much if it wasn’t GSP, even though he was the main event now and put the people in the seats.
Nick Diaz saved that card. OK? That’s what people need to remember when they talk about responsibility, is that he showed up, hamstring injury, knee injury, whatever. He had the same thing. He’s the guy that showed up. He’s the guy that fought his heart out, him and B.J. Penn. They put on a show. They’re two great warriors. They saved the UFC that night.
That’s a hard pill to swallow. I think it’s patently unfair. Myself, in my opinion, that’s unfair. I think Nick obviously knows it’s unfair, and these are talks we’re going to have with Dana White and with the UFC.
We’ve had good negotiations with Dana before. We’re going to put everything on the table, and I’m confident that we’re going to be able to iron all of this out and that Dana will make it right.
Listen to entire interview… (6:25 mark)
