As you may have noticed, UFC fighter Nate Diaz has a tendency at times to be somewhat, how shall I put this, volatile. Yes, that’s the word. So when CM Punk ran into him while attending UFC 200 one might have, reasonably, expected the worst.
That’s because when Punk signed with UFC this is what Nate Diaz had to say about it to MMA Junkie…
“I don’t dig it,” Diaz said flatly. “He has got no fights. I know he’s a big draw. I looked him up. Everyone’s going to buy tickets. It’s going to be great for the venue and the UFC, but at the same time, it downgrades all the fighters.”
“He might do great, but why does he get a chance?” Diaz asked. “He’s an amateur. You’re going to put an amateur in there with pros? That makes us all amateurs, so I think it’s ridiculous. As far as I’m concerned, f-ck him, f-ck the whole situation. Anybody who takes that fight is tripping.”
“If I want to, I can’t go play in the NBA – not even Stefan Struve’s big ass,” Diaz said. “He can’t go play in the NBA if he wants to because he feels like making a change. For a publicity thing? They wouldn’t pay him no money, and they wouldn’t even let him play. It’s ridiculous.
“I don’t think you should just let some millionaire WWE guy just come on over and play a little game, like have fun with his career. I’m over here busting my ass, fighting for 10 years and doing my thing and having a serious job that I have to do for this. And this guy is going to come over and probably get paid more than everyone in the room.”
Pretty strong words. So naturally when CM Punk ran into Diaz at UFC 200 he was expecting, at the very least, to be disrespected. Amazingly, it turned out completely different according to a story he recently told Fox Sports.
“UFC 200 I was doing an autograph signing and the guy I was signing the autograph for started like pointing behind me and I heard someone like yelling my name and I turned around and I was on a riser and Nate Diaz was on the ground and he was like ‘hey man come here’,” Punk explained when speaking to FOX Sports recently. “I was like ‘what’s up?’ and he was the nicest (expletive) guy.
“I don’t know if he’ll get mad and this will ruin the image of Nate Diaz, but he was like ‘hey man, I talked some (expletive) before and I don’t know you and I’m sorry’ and he’s like, ‘Gilbert (Melendez) and Ronda (Rousey) said that you’re a cool dude and they love you’ and I started looking around for the cameras. I was like all right. I thought that was super, super cool of him. Super nice guy.”
Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe, one of the reasons Nate was so chill with Punk is related to his recent devil-may-care attitude of showing off just how much he loves weed these days.
Just a thought.