Both Nick and Nate Diaz have always been vocal with their admiration for Jean Claude Van Damme.
Recently, the ‘Bloodsport’ star recently spent a few hours of his day training with the both the Diaz brothers. And for Nick, it was a surreal moment to get to practice some drills with his inspiration to get into fighting.
“Dreams do come true,” the elder Diaz told TMZ. “I used to watch all his movies. That’s how I got started doing kicks and doing the splits. I thought it was the coolest thing when I was eight years old.”
In the film, Van Damme’s character Kurt Sloane was depicted kicking down banana trees and doing splits as part of his training. According to Diaz, the said method is “the basic formula” that every fighter should go through in camp.
“When I started training, I thought there were people doing the same type of training like (in) Kickboxer, around the world,” Diaz said. “But realistically, those movies where there’s all that training camps, and training leading up to the fights, that’s kind of the basic formula (for) training.”
“I think that’s how one should train,” he added. “If you’re gonna fight full contact or MMA, you better train every part of your body, like old school.”