Last September, Nick Diaz’s team announced his plans of a comeback, with the 37-year-old said to have left his partying ways and gotten back to training seriously again. Now his manager confidently states that there’s a “99.999” percent chance he will fight in 2021, as they are targeting to finalize his UFC deal in the coming weeks.
“We just gotta get everything else right with the organization and with everything, and we’ll be able to move forward,” Diaz’s manager Kevin Mubenga said on the Fight Game Chronicles podcast.
“We were two months in by that time, that was August or September where he was going two months hard. Now, we are in December, so, he is four or five months in. He took a little break because you don’t want to overtrain and over-exhausted,” Mubenga said. “Took a little break last month and now we’re gonna pick it back up in December and go into the new year hopefully with a deal done. Make sure the money is right and the opponent is right and we’ll be able to move forward.”
While his manager sounds confident of striking a new deal, it will be interesting to see if they can get the UFC to open up their checkbooks enough for the 37-year-old, when they’ve been hesitant to do so with many other fighters.
Diaz hasn’t fought since his 2015 bout against Anderson Silva, and as his social media posts showed and his teammates admitted, the former Strikeforce champion spent the last couple of years partying too much in Las Vegas. Their target return of 2021 would also mark an entire decade since his last official win.
As for possible opponents if he really does return, perhaps instead of a bout against Jorge Masvidal that he wanted, it might be better to fight someone at a similar stage in his career. A more reasonable match up could be trying to avenge a loss against to his former rival Diego Sanchez, who is looking for a name opponent for his “retirement fight.”
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