Yesterday it was announced that there would be a major announcement on the future of Nick Diaz on the Gracie Fighter website and that announcement has just been made. According to Cesar Gracie, despite Diaz’s previous claims that he was retiring from the sport, a decision made in anger following a decision loss to Carlos Condit and reinforced by his subsequent suspension for marijuana metabolites being in his system that same fight, Diaz will return to the cage. Gracie also made it clear that they’re hunting big game.
From the announcement:
This week we had a great talk and he made it clear to me that he is ready to get back to the cage. Nick Diaz will return.
To address the NSAC suspension, I will say that we have appealed to the courts and if things go our way, it will be plausible that Nick could return as early as sometime at the end of this year.
…
He will respectfully ask for a fight with Anderson Silva, a fighter he respects and would like to challenge.
Silva’s camp has been speaking of a fight with GSP, possibly even at a catch weight. Nick will take that fight in a minute but has told me that should Silva decide not to drop at all, he will move up to 185lbs to face the Champ.
Gracie’s talk of appealing the suspension in court is likely to go nowhere. There is very little chance of getting a suspension by a state athletic commission overturned when there is a positive drug test on file (making Nick a multi-time offender, mind you) regardless of what kind of fancy “lawyer-speak” they try to come up with to differentiate the metabolites from actual marijuana.
The most interesting thing is the idea of Diaz against Silva, either at a catchweight or at middleweight.
Assuming Diaz has to serve out his suspension, he’d be able to fight again in early 2013, giving Silva one fight to get through to make that superfight happen. It also plays into the Silva tendency to want the big, easy to promote fights. Diaz’s mouth and reputation certainly make that fight an easy sell.
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