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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
When Nick Diaz signed back with the UFC in 2011, the UFC wanted to put him immediately into a fight with Georges St-Pierre in a UFC Welterweight Championship bout. Unfortunately, he decided to fall off the face of the map for consecutive media events for the matchup and was pulled from the bout.
A year and a half later, Diaz is back in a fight with St-Pierre, and he got things off to a positive start last week when he made the trip to Montreal for the first press conference. UFC President Dana White was then highly complimentary of him and his demeanor after a year out of action.
"Not only did Nick come, he was on time for everything – I'm pretty sure he didn't miss any flights," White said after UFC on Fox 6 on Saturday (via MMAJunkie.com). "He couldn't have been cooler. He came there and did what he had to do. He even stuck around and did pictures with the fans after. It was cool."
White said he didn't blame Diaz for his aversion to the grind of media events, but also made it clear that it's a necessary evil in the fight game.
"I know he hates to do it, but everybody does," White said. "You guys have no idea. These guys are in their camp, they're in their own little world, and then they've gotta leave and do all the press and media and it's hard. That sounds stupid, but it's harder than people think. You're answering the same questions over and over. But it's what we do. It's part of the game, and everybody wants to talk about making Floyd Mayweather money, but Floyd works his ass off to promote a fight."
Still, White didn't take Diaz's demeanor in Montreal as a sign that they got to him with his UFC 137 removal. Instead, White simply thinks Diaz is ready to get back to action after spending almost all of 2012 on suspension.
"I don't want to say that he learned a lesson, like, 'Yeah, we taught him a lesson,'" White said. "I think a lot of what he said at the press conference is true. I think he had this feeling like he's been fighting since he was 18 years old, he never caught a break, always felt like he was on the wrong side of the deal since he was 18 years old. He's had a year off, feels like he rested up, healed up some injuries and had some time to relax.
"Without him saying it, I'm sure he's probably pretty excited to be back into it. You take a year off, pretty f***ing boring."
Penick's Analysis: Diaz's calm, cool, and collected approach to last week's press conference, along with downright friendly interaction towards Georges St-Pierre, is exactly the opposite of what many of his fans expected to see. That's not always a good thing, and taking out the grudge angle certainly cuts into St-Pierre's reasoning for wanting the fight in the first place. Regardless, so long as Diaz is professional, does what he needs to do from a media standpoint, and stops smoking marijuana close enough to the fight to avoid a failed drug test, then that's enough to go forward on.
[Nick Diaz art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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