According to Edson Barboza’s manager, Alex Davis, UFC Lightweight star Nate Diaz turned down a fight against the Brazilian contender for November.
Davis told MMAFighting.com that his client was offered a bout with Diaz for the UFC Fight Night 57 event and accepted it, only to later find out that Diaz turned it down.
As a result, Barboza went on to fight — and defeat — Bobby Green at the show in Austin, Texas on November 22nd.
“He was supposed to fight Nate Diaz, but Nate didn’t accept the fight,” said Davis.
With Diaz returning to the Octagon against Rafael dos Anjos on December 13th, Davis feels the winner of that fight could be an interesting opponent for Barboza.
“There’s Rafael dos Anjos vs. Nate Diaz and a few other good fights now, so (Barboza) should fight the winner of one of them next,” Davis said. “I think that (Diaz) would be an interesting fight to promote Barboza in the media because (Barboza) doesn’t talk too much, so a fight with Nate Diaz would be good in that sense, but Bobby Green was also a great fight.”
Davis continued, “There are many guys in this division, many tough fights. We’ll have (Gilbert) Melendez vs. (Anthony) Pettis now, and there’s (Khabib) Nurmagomedov, (Abel) Trujillo and many other fighters, and (Barboza) can beat every single one of them.”
With the big UFC 181: Hendricks vs. Lawler 2 and Pettis vs. Melendez PPV coming up soon, make sure to check out MMANews.com leading up to the 12/6 event date.
For coverage of the event, keep up with these pages: UFC 181 NEWS || UFC 181 RESULTS
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