Former UFC lightweight contender Nate Diaz was certainly in a talkative mood on Tuesday afternoon.
The Ultimate Fighter season 5 winner spoke with MMAFighting.com regarding his issues with his UFC pay, and explained that while he is ‘ready to fight tomorrow,’ he feels like he is being kept on the ‘waiting list.’
“I’m ready to fight but not for some funny money that they’re trying to give me. They can let me go or they can let me fight, but let me do something. They know I need to make some money. I feel like they’re just trying to keep me on the waiting list. I don’t even want to communicate through anybody. If they want to figure out what’s going on, we should talk. No one is contacting me. I’m just doing my thing. Training every day. I’m ready to fight tomorrow. “
Diaz’s main issue is the money he is being offered to fight. He stated that he considers it “chump change” and is far too embarrassed to accept that.
“They need to be about more money. My contract is all f*cked up. 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 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*t. 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. I don’t talk to the UFC. No one calls me. I’m not going to call them begging. They know I’m on call, I take every fight. They know what they should be giving out.”
Diaz also detailed his reasons for not accepting the Khabib Nurmagomedov fight, stating that the UFC was trying to “lowball” him and refused to renegotiate his contract.
“Then they called me to take the Khabib [Nurmagomedov] fight when it wasn’t working out for them and Gil [Melendez]. They were trying to lowball Gil, too, and he was supposed to fight Khabib, but he said he couldn’t take the fight for the money they were offering. So they call me the next day and ask me to fight Khabib. I said, I’ll take the fight as long as I can renegotiate my contract. And then it was all downhill from there. Then they tweeted out that I turned down the fight, and I never turned down the fight. They tried to do me dirty. “
The Stockton native also admitted to being “broke” and indebted to the IRS, which adds to his frustrating situation with the promotion.
“If I can get released, I can go fight somewhere and make some money. If they can renegotiate, I can make some money, because right now I’m broke. For some reason, the IRS is telling me that I owe them more money than I have right now, and I pay my taxes every year. “
He concluded by claiming that he is paid less than the UFC’s “cheerleaders.”
“The crazy thing to me is that in what other professional sport do the cheerleaders make more than the athletes? I’m sure Arianny Celeste, Brittney Palmer, Joe Rogan, Bruce Buffer, probably you, everybody makes more money than I do. So I’m trying to make a move here. The way that the UFC makes me look, too, makes people I know believe that I’m some type of millionaire. I got a family to feed. I got my mom. She just got a brand new house and working two jobs still. I’m trying to break her off some money when I can but I’m going as broke as her. There’s a lot more money that needs to be dished out because it’s coming in, and I know it.”
About the author
