And why would any of the talk stop now? In retrospect, about two weeks ago at this time we were kind of wondering what was with the lull in the UFC 158 hype, then BOOM, the floodgates opened and now this is one of the most hyped fights since the original GSP/Diaz was set to go down 18 months ago. Yesterday, we posted about Dana White stating that he thinks Cesar Gracie is part of the Diaz brother’s PR problem, and now Cesar has responded with the the verbal missiles you would expect from someone who manages the Diaz brothers.
First Cesar responds directly to Dana’s allegations. Then, he discusses the no-show of Nick Diaz at the open workouts, and how much of the responsibility falls on the UFC for booking such odd flight times for Nick.
It’s kind of childish really, and it came out of left field. I think it started when I had mentioned the thing about possibly upgrading Nick’s plane ticket from coach to business class. I had tweeted that because I thought these fighters that do the main event fights, and make the promotions millions of dollars, they need to be treated a little bit better. I thought it was not a big deal on my part to point that out. It started with that.
I think later, it was something he said about Nick and Nate being late to their interviews, costing the company over $50,000. I questioned that a little bit, and talked about it in an interview. They got their stuff done. They were a little late with it, but costing $50k seemed a little ridiculous.
It just kind of set Dana on a rant about those two things. This is a free country, and people can have their own opinions. If he wants to try to act like a baby about it, that’s his prerogative. I’ve always been cool with Dana, so this kind of came out of left field for me.
To address the issue about me being part of the problem, the thing he has to understand, and I think, for the most part, he does understand, that the Diaz’ are gonna do what they’re gonna do. I can’t make them do something different. I will tell them what they need to do, I’ll say what Dana wants them to do, but as far as making grown men do something that they don’t want to do, it’s very difficult, and there’s nothing I can actually do about that. I think Dana knows that, so I don’t really understand why he’s trying to put a spin on it, saying I’m part of the problem, as if I’m the one telling them not to do something, which is absolutely ridiculous, and the farthest thing from the truth.
Cesar on media obligations:
We definitely have to do media obligations to sell fights, but sometimes there’s a conflict of interest. They got Nick the ticket, he gets to Canada at midnight, and then he has to go through customs, and then he has to work out, because he’s been on a plane for I don’t know how many hours. It’s a whole day of travel, so he has to work out because he’s cutting weight.
Nick didn’t get in until like 5 am after his workout. They had the media thing, which they wanted him to be in the lobby at 1030 am. There’s going to be conflicts like that, and Nick wasn’t trying to disrespect anybody. He loves his fans.
They just need to be a little bit more understanding, and maybe get together with the fighters when they put these schedules together. What’s going to work guys? What is going to have the least impact on your training and your weight cut? What is going to have the least impact on all these things that are going to affect you in your fight? Nick wants to be 100% on Saturday, so he can have the best fight he can. I know the other fighters, privately, they’ve told us they love it, because someone is actually doing what they should be doing. That’s Nick Diaz.
“That’s Nick Diaz” sounds like a fair enough reason for anything.
Thanks to BloodyElbow for the quotes.
