Orders are nobody can see the Great Fertitta! Not nobody, not nohow! Suffice to say, that if Mike Kogan were Dorothy’s agent, the land of Oz might still be a bit big on witches. Kogan recently sat down with Submission Radio to talk about the negotiations between himself and Joe Silva on the behalf of Nate Diaz. It appears that they aren’t a lot further than when Dana White surmised that “He’s under a new contract right now and we offer him fights.” Apparently, sometimes it’s just that simple.
Here was what Kogan had to say on the current negotiating process:
“We asked to sit down and have a conversation about our contract and they said no. So we said ok, then we’ll sit out and wait until you know, something changes.”
“We’re just kinda all in limbo. Hopefully we’ll sit down and have a productive conversation. So far, all of our interaction has been through media, you know we say something and then they say something and we say something. We’re yet to actually have a conversation.”
“I had a brief conversation with Joe Silva and he said ‘well that’s not going to happen’ so I said ‘ok sounds good’ so we’ll just wait. Wait and see, but we don’t have a specific goal, we just want to be able to have a conversation and see what happens.”
It’s times like this when I find it really hard to believe that this is reality as I know it. The idea that talks between a promotion and one of their fighters could be at this much of a standstill just seems ludicrous. Are Diaz and his camp just going to be content to wait for the phone to ring? Because, I can only assume it wont. And, the way the UFC structures its contracts I have to think they could keep Diaz locked up pretty much indefinitely if they wanted to. They were certainly able to do that with Heath Herring, is Nate going to share his fate? The UFC has classically provided very little wiggle room for fighters looking to steer their own ship, but for now it seems like Daiz and his management are satisfied with drifting out to sea.
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