Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz
Nick Diaz addresses Jason “Mayhem” Miller and fighting at middleweight
The bad blood between Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz began in April 2010 at “Strikeforce: Nashville” where the two were involved in a post-fight brawl following Jake Shields’ win over Dan Henderson.
As Shields was being interviewed in the cage after the win, Miller entered the cage without permission and challenged Shields to a rematch.
It was Shields’ first Strikeforce middelweight title defense and Cesar Gracie’s camp felt Miller was stealing Shields’ moment in the spotlight. Gracie trained lightweight Gilbert Melendez shoved Miller. Nick and Nate Diaz pounced on him and chaos ensued.
Miller has been calling out the older of the Diaz brothers every since, but the fight has yet to happen.
Miller is a middleweight who has competed as a welterweight, and Diaz is a welterweight who has competed at middleweight in the past. Weight is not what is preventing the grudge match from taking place. It all comes down to dollars.
“I’d be happy to move up, but I’d like to get paid for it,” said Diaz via conference call. “I’d like to get paid something extra, double, triple, something crazy for me to do something spectacular.”
“I don’t like how people try to say I didn’t accept the fight with Mayhem Miller because I was too small. I never said anything about that. I said, if I’m going to go off track and screw with my whole season, gonna screw with my whole year — It’s going to screw with my capabilities of fighting at 170 pounds. If I’m going to do that I would like to get paid in full. I would like to have a reason for doing that, not just do it at everyone else’s convenience.”
Diaz has no problems competing in different weight classes. He’s fought as low as lightweight and as high as middleweight, but if he could pick moving up or moving down, he would choose to drop to lightweight.
“I’d rather move down before I’d move up. If you want me to move into a different weight class than let me move down if you’re not going to pay me more money for it. If I’m not getting paid more, I might as well be moving down instead of up,” said the Cesar Gracie trained fighter.
“It’s probably better for me, but I’ll do either way, but can I get paid for it? People want to see something great. I’ll friggen fight at 155 pounds, or offer me a big money fight at 185 pounds and I’ll make it happen, but I’m not just doing it for free when I’d make the same money to fight at 170 pounds. It’s more work. It’s twice as much work.”
“I never didn’t want to sign for that fight with Miller,” added Diaz. “They were talking about making me move weight. I said, tell his ass to (expletive) get in shape and make weight like I do. It’s (expletive) hard enough for me to make 170 pounds. He acts like he wouldn’t be able to do it. He doesn’t want to work hard like me. That’s the problem, so he can work his ass off and make 170 pounds or 175 pounds, okay, or somebody can pay me a couple of (expletive) million dollars and I’ll move up to 185 pounds and fight him.
“Or he can quit getting (expletive) slapped in public. I know somebody who has that (expletive) on video tape. That mother (expletive) doesn’t want to fight me. Talking about he wants to fight me every chance he gets.”
“I’ll fight at any weight. I’ll fight at 185 pounds,” continued Diaz. “I’d like to get paid, you know. (Manny) Pacquaio’s making 40 (expletive) million dollars. GSP’s (George St. Pierre) making a couple of million dollars. I’m over here (expletive) driving a Honda with my (expletive) breaking down. (Expletive) all you mother (expletive).”
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