Manager: F@$% no Nate and I not happy with contract

Top MMA manager Mike Kogan, recently spoke with Fight Hub about Nate Diaz ending his holdout to take a fight with Rafael dos Anjos on December 13 at UFC on FOX 13.

Diaz signed an eight-fight contract with the UFC, and shortly afterwards, teammate Gil Melendez, who at the time had been signed with Bellator, signed an extremely lucrative contract with the UFC.

Melendez’s contract guaranteed at least 75% of his fights be on PPV, that he gets points on the PPV regardless of where on the card he appears, and that the points kick in at a lower minimum buy rate than any contract in UFC history. Melendez got one of the best contracts in UFC history because the UFC had to match Bellator’s contract, and as Bellator did not have any PPVs, they could put nearly anything they wanted relative to PPVs.

When details of Melendez’s contract came out, Diaz understandably wanted to revisit aspects of the contract he had recently signed. When the UFC refused, Diaz refused to fight. A public relations fight broke out in the media, social and mainstream, and in the process, harsh words were exchanged between Diaz and his manager, and UFC president Dana White.

“My contract is all f—ed up,” said Diaz to Ariel Helwani in April. “I want to be paid like these other fighters. I’m over here getting chump change. At this point, they’re paying all my partners and other people I train with are getting real money, and it’s too embarrassing for me to even fight again for the money they’re paying me. So they can either pay me or let me go. I’m with that.

“I train harder than everybody in the UFC. And then there’s boxers out there getting multimillion dollar contracts, and I’m a bigger draw than boxers. It’s embarrassing. I think I’m the biggest draw in the lightweight division.”

“I didn’t like what my brother and my partners got paid. Now that they got a better contract, which still ain’t s—, it blows what I get out of the water. And they deserve triple what they get. I’ve been in the UFC for eight years and never turned down a fight. It’s not like I’m getting paid 20 bucks an hour and they’re getting 50 bucks an hour. I’m getting 20 bucks an hour and they’re getting paid 15,000 bucks an hour. They blow me out the water. At this point, I can’t even go to lunch with my partners because if we start talking about contracts or our business, I don’t have anything but bitter s— to say.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t get paid s—. I get $60,000 and $60,000. If I were doing this for the fame, I would have quit seven years ago. I can’t tell you what my brother and Gil make, but I can tell you that they signed a contract for more than I get paid to headline and win a fight, and that’s bullsh—. So you understand where I’m coming from? I can’t even fight for the money they’re offering me. So I ask to get released because I can’t fight there for that.”

The outspoken Kogan began the interview by saying with a smile that the management game was “as good as it’s going to get with my inability to keep my mouth shut.”

Kogan’s face turned serious when he discussed his relationship with UFC president Dana White.

“I think at this point we really don’t have a relationship,” said Kogan.”I feel like it’s important to have a relationship, but I also feel like it’s important not to trash your fighters in public because you don’t like what they’re saying, and devalue them, and then have to come back and backtrack.”

“The guy spent a whole year trashing the guy, and now he’s fighting a No. 3 guy in the co-main event on FOX. I mean talk about ‘needle movers.’ If he’s not moving the needle what is he doing there? How do you get to a co-main event and ‘you’re not a needle mover’ and ‘you’re insignificant’ and ‘I don’t care if he never fights again, he can just go away forever.’

“Nate is my boy, and if someone talks about him this way then I’m going to say what I gotta say, and let the chips fall where they may. You know?

“It’s one thing to have a relationship. It’s another thing to be bullied around and wake up and just sit around every day trying to check the temperature outside to see if it going to be a good day or not. I don’t do it, so I don’t care. If it effects my business, as far as my ability to sign new fighters, then yes, it does. And I have told every single one of my fighters, ‘if you have an opportunity to go to the UFC and I’m the preventing point, leave and go, I don’t care.’

“I mean, I know what I get into when I open my mouth. But I also like to look at the mirror in the morning and I like what I see. So if that means I manage guys who fight elsewhere, that’s fine.

“I don’t regret anything! What is there to regret??!? Let’s breakdown what I said. Did I say a lie? No.”

“In private we had a conversation where we said ‘hey, there were some promises made and we would like to talk about them again. No answer, and the next thing you know, they’re trashing him] in pubic that he’s afraid to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov, which was bulls—. Nobody said afraid, We just said, ‘Hey, you want me to fight up-an-coming guys and build them up and give them exposure? Then you have to pay.’

So they go out and trash him. Then we came back and said can we have a conversation again, in private. Did you see me do interviews? Did you see Nate go out in public and say anything? No.

“Then comes the whole ‘they don’t move needles, they suck. He’s 1-2, he’s 1-3, he’s irrelevant, he’s insignificant. They yank him off the rankings because he’s inactive. Dominick Cruz was on that f—ing thing for two years before they finally said OK, he isn’t active.”

“Everybody just swallows it. I’m not the guy who swallows it. I’m the guy who says what everybody else thinks and knows, but doesn’t say. Why? Because that’s the f—ing truth. So I don’t regret anything. What’s there to regret? I didn’t lie, I didn’t make anything up. And then I get called a ‘scumbag’ because I’m interfering. I’m not interfering with anything. I’m just not letting you guys stomp all over this guy without at least firing back with some answers.

“And at the end of the day, he’s back, and he’s fighting in a co-main event.”

“Nobody said everything’s OK. He’s back because he needs to fight. He needs to earn a living. If he was Mayweather and making $30 million a fight he’d probably never come back and you’d never hear from him again, but he doesn’t get paid the kind of money that people think he does. So you can’t sit out forever. You have to at some point come back, but at least he came back on his own terms. He got the fight that he wanted against a top three contender.”

Kogan was then asked if he was now happy with the contract.

“No. F— no. No. Not. Not happy. We were not happy when we were signing it. We just kind of made it work because it was two weeks before the fight and there just wasn’t time to be making a lot of waves. And, you know, it is what it is.”

Diaz fights Rafael dos Anjos on Dec. 13 at UFC on FOX 13 in Phoenix, Arizona. live on FOX.