Former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Rashad Evans is the latest to offer his take on the Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz mega-fight from UFC 196 earlier this month.
“Suga” Rashad spoke about the fight during his appearance on Monday’s edition of “The MMA Hour” at MMAFighting.com, and explained why he felt McGregor “wasn’t himself” going into the Diaz fight.
“With McGregor, I felt like he was a lot different that last fight because — he wasn’t the same person. It seemed like he was putting on a little bit too much just for the show. And I know the woes of putting on too much for the show because I know at the end of the day you’re taking away from what makes you sharp in the cage.”
According to Evans, not cutting weight — among other factors — likely played a role in McGregor not being himself for the fight.
“Another problem was the fact that he didn’t have to cut weight,” he said. “Now every single thing that goes into a fight is a process. For me, putting on my suit — making sure I’m suited and booted before I go out there — that helps me get to my rhythm so then I’m not analyzing every aspect of a fight before it’s time to. So for him not cutting weight, for him not having that on his mind, he then put other things on his plate that he wouldn’t normally do because he was cutting weight.
“And then, if you add the physical attributes to it, you have a guy in Conor McGregor who is dominating at his weight class because really, he’s tall and he as a cannon for his left hand. But he makes people make mistakes because he leads them to believe that he’s a lot closer than he is and then he pulls back, and then he catches them reaching. He’s either able to catch them with counter strikes or he makes them have a huge range to fulfill.”
Additionally, Evans explained why he feels McGregor should avoid taking a rematch against Diaz.
“I don’t think [Conor] should go against Diaz,” Evans said. “I think that he should stay at his weight class at 145 and dominate at 145 and be the best 145-pounder he can be. I think the fact that he’s ambitious enough to go up in weight class and wants to say that weight classes don’t mean nothing, it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. We’ve seen what weight classes can do when he went to 170. Weight class is real. It’s real. We need them. He knows that now.
“But I don’t think that him fighting Diaz would be a smart move for him, because he did catch him with a few shots, but you’ve got to think, he fought Diaz on 10 day’s notice. You see what I’m saying? So if he goes against a Diaz who has much longer to train, he’s waking up another animal. He’s dealing with another animal altogether. So I think that he should just let sleeping dogs lie and just take that as a lesson and go back to 145 and dominate.”
Evans returns to the Octagon against late replacement opponent Glover Teixeira at UFC On FOX 19 in Tampa, Florida.
