Former chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson advises Nate Diaz not to sign new UFC deal

A British politician who was one of the masterminds behind Brexit has offered UFC fighter Nate Diaz some unsolicited career advice. Dominic Cummings, a…

By: Karim Zidan | 2 years ago
Former chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson advises Nate Diaz not to sign new UFC deal
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

A British politician who was one of the masterminds behind Brexit has offered UFC fighter Nate Diaz some unsolicited career advice.

Dominic Cummings, a British political strategist and former chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, suggested that Diaz should not sign a new UFC contract, and should instead wait until UFC President Dana White approaches him to set up a trilogy fight with former two-division champion Conor McGregor.

“Look how they screwed Georges St-Pierre, now waiting for contract to expire,” Cummings tweeted at Diaz on Oct. 17.

Diaz, who has one fight remaining on his current UFC contract, expressed interest in fighting Vicente Luque next. However, Luque’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, doubts the UFC will offer him the fight unless Diaz signs a new deal with the organization.

‘I think the only way the UFC will agree to make this fight happen [is] if Nate re-signs with the UFC,” Abdelaziz told MMAFighting.com. “But I don’t know if this is good for Nate to re-sign with the UFC.

As for Cummings, the strategist was involved in a scandal in May 2020 after it was revealed that he had travelled to his parents’ farm in Durham during the mandated lockdown period while experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. While dozens of Conservative MPs called for his immediate resignation for his noncompliance with public health restrictions, Johnson supported his chief adviser by saying Cummings had acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity.”

Cummings was viewed as adversarial towards the media and was labeled by The Guardian as “the most powerful and the most rebarbative unelected adviser ever to inhabit Number 10.”

“Mr Cummings was a brutal operator who didn’t care who hated him, never displayed a scintilla of self-doubt and blazed with fierce beliefs,” wrote The Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley.

Cummings departed Downing Street in November 2021. He later testified to the Commons Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee on the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that the “government failed” in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He added that Johnson was not a “fit and proper person” to see the United Kingdom through the pandemic.

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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