Coach: Diaz wasn’t hurt by McGregor punches

UFC lightweight Nate Diaz’s striking coach the great Richard Perez appeared again recently on the great Submission Radioand discussed the fight with UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor at welterweight, and the not-yet-signed rematch. 

“There’s no signed contract,” said Perez. “He just said they told him that he might be fighting again – 170, McGregor. So I said, okay. So he’s planning on coming into the gym next week and start working out, just in case, you know, whether we get [the fight]. You know, he’s not gonna be just laying around.

Perez believes the rematch will take place at 170.

What I see is that McGregor likes that weight,” said the coach. “I guess he likes 170 for some reason. That’s the only thing I can think of, he feels comfortable.

It appeared that Diaz sustained a lot of damage in the first round with McGregor. However, the boxing coach said that Diaz was actually employing the sublime art of rolling with the punches.

They didn’t really hurt him,” said Perez. “Because if you notice, he was going with the punch. And his right eye was already cut from his first [fight] when he fought Michael Johnson. So I don’t think it was completely healed and it just opened up again. I mean, he was going with the punches. He didn’t really get hurt at all. Even with the uppercut, I could see his head coming up, he went with it. And the body shot, the way McGregor threw it, it wasn’t really effective. Cause Nathan was doing a really good job. Sure, he was getting hit, but not like he should’ve got hit. Now, in a better shape, it’s gonna be harder for McGregor. A lot harder.

When he’s in good shape and he has no injury, he dominates. He dominates easy. He stops people or he beats them. You know, they don’t have a chance. And McGregor had a full camp training, and he even moved up weight to get stronger. Nathan was out, enjoying himself, going to Cabo. You know, he’s eating and drinking and having fun, and they call him. So if it took him two weeks to dominate a guy that’s undefeated, that’s the golden boy, what do you think is going to happen in three months training?

“If they fight again in like three months, that’s fine. Nathan’s gonna have plenty of time in camp to get in good shape. McGregor’s never seen Nathan in really good shape, he’s seen him only half-ass. This is nothing. He wasn’t really in tip-top shape at all. And we knew that the first round is gonna be real quick for McGregor. So Nathan and I, we worked on it and he knew, we talked about him going out there and not getting carried away. You know, don’t get in a slugfest, move around. He got hit a couple of times, but it was no big deal. He came back, second round, he went out there and started letting them hands go, and that’s what started to turn the whole thing around.

“Once he [McGregor] got hit in the face, it was over with, because he couldn’t take the punishment anymore. Just like McGregor said, ‘I went to the ground, you know, I couldn’t take the punches.’ And when he went to the ground it was a bigger mistake, cause Nathan’s great standing up and great on the ground.

Perez also engaged in entirely unsubstantiated speculation that McGregor was on Performance Enhancing Drugs. 

I mean, I’m not around him. Like I told you at the beginning, I said I’m not the one that really knows, but just by watching a guy to come up from 145 to 170, you’re gonna have some fat on you,” said Perez, “Believe me, you’re going to have to have some fat somewhere. Around your waist, somewhere. He didn’t have any fat at all. He was solid muscle. So how are you going to build that much in two weeks and be solid muscle? You know what I’m saying? Because he was supposed to fight at 155, but he was already overweight. I know he was. When he found out that – what’s his name [Rafael Dos Anjos] – hurt his ankle – I don’t know if he broke it – then he said, he called Nathan out at 170. So that tells me right there that he couldn’t get down to weight because something’s making him build up.

Like I said, I’m not the one who really knows about him, but to me, I feel like he’s gotta be on some kind of substance, you know, to get built up. Cause he’s a little guy, and a little guy can’t get real bulky that quick.”

McGregor is of course not a little guy. He is a welterweight, who cuts ferociously hard to get to featherweight. If he ever does it again is another question. But given that muscle is easier to cut from than fat, McGregor having a low percent body fat when weighing in at 170 does not point towards PED usage, at all.

Perez also said a rematch with Rafael Dos Anjos would be different. RDA beat Diaz via unanimous decision on December 13, 2014 at UFC on FOX 13.

It would be a lot different because he was hurt in that fight,” said Perez. “In training camp, he got hurt. He don’t tell nobody, but he was hurt in that training camp and he couldn’t train for a while. I mean, for a while – most of the camp, I mean, he was pretty hurt. So that’s why it went Dos Anjos’ way, because Nathan couldn’t perform as he usually does. And if you watch the fight, you can tell he wasn’t in on it.

“Even people asked me, ‘hey, that wasn’t Nathan.’ I said, ‘I know.’ So what happened? I told them, ‘he got hurt in the camp.’ ‘So why doesn’t he say [anything]?’ He don’t say nothing. Fighters don’t do that. They just go out there out there and do it. And if they lose, they lose, and they try to come back.

Perez said he tried to get Diaz to pull out of the fight.

Yeah I did tell him that,” said the coach. “And he said, ‘no I can’t back out.’ I said, ‘you’re right, but I just thought I’d ask you.’ He said, ‘I can’t back out, Rich. You know, this is a world title fight and I have to do it.’ I said, ‘okay, alright.’