Diaz: I’ve been underpaid, under appreciated…
Nate Diaz: “…until one morning I woke and for some reason I was like, ‘Hold up. I’ve been really underappreciated, underpaid, under-all-kinds-of-sh-t.’”
It will have been have been a full year since Nate Diaz fought when he steps into the Octagon at UFC on FOX 13. But it wasn’t an injury that kept Diaz out competition; he opted out. Diaz cited lack of pay for his main reason, but did finally decide to come back, although he’s still not happy with his pay:
They told me I could renegotiate whenever I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy the entire time, Diaz said. So now I felt like it was a good time. They’re asking me to fight a guy, so I said, ‘I’ll fight him, but can I renegotiate?’ Then they blew me up all over the social media saying I turned down the fight. They’re all saying I turned down this, I turned down that, but I never turned down any fight ever in my entire life.
I felt like it was a favor. ‘This didn’t work out with this, so yeah, I’ll fight the guy. Can I renegotiate since you told me I could already do that?’ You know what else? They could have simply said, ‘No.’ And I would have said, ‘Ah, f-ck it.’ Then I would have gone and fought the motherf-cker. They could have said, ‘No,’ but instead, I read it all over the Internet, and I feel like it was kind of a coverup. No one paid attention to anything. I was trying to let it be known what happened with that. I got the sh-t end of the deal on that one.
Despite his best efforts, Diaz (17-9 MMA, 12-7 UFC) didn’t get what he wanted. He’s set to return to competition under his current contract on Dec. 13 at UFC on FOX 13, where he meets Rafael dos Anjos (22-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC) in the co-main event at Phoenix’s US Airways Center.
After a career-long one-year layoff, Diaz opted to push forward despite his unhappiness.
I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of for a lot of years with the whole situation, Diaz said. More so because I kind of grew up in this, and I didn’t understand or know what was what with money and contracts, and what was happening, until one morning I woke and for some reason I was like, ‘Hold up. I’ve been really underappreciated, underpaid, under-all-kinds-of-sh-t.’
I wanted to try to get my situation fixed. I was trying to get a fight going on, but at the same time I didn’t want – it was a whole mess going on. But everything got cleared, up and I’m ready to get back to work and do my thing.