Back in 2015 at a World Series of Fighting event, Nate Diaz and Khabib Nurmagomedov were involved in a scuffle. There, the Stockton-native slapped the undefeated lightweight champion.
Now, years later, Diaz looked back on the slap and why he did what he did.
“I’m not into this bully s***, he’s [Nurmagomedov] into bullying and stuff, that’s his thing,” Diaz said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. (transcript via South China Morning Post). “When I ran into him and his team at the World Series, I was standing there watching Jake, my friend, fight. And they took a group picture with me behind them, just to laugh at me, make fun of me.
“[Nurmagomedov] is like, ‘Ah, come on, man’ and they’re all laughing, 12 Russian dudes. I slapped him in his face for making fun of me and I’m like, ‘What?’ And he didn’t do nothing.”
The confrontation got Nate Diaz kicked out of the venue where he says he waited outside for Nurmagomedov to come out. Which, looking back on, he regrets.
“I was outside furious,” Diaz recounted. “So I waited for him to come out there and I went to get him again and he ran off.
“I shouldn’t have done that. It was reckless, it was stupid. I was mad, but he was picking on me. So now he’s trying to act like ‘Mr Make It Right’. ‘I’m Mr Good, this guy’s a piece of s***, I don’t need this trash talk’. Whatever, you were gonna pick on me … trying to act like the victim, that Conor [McGregor] was picking on him.”
