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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Though he fell to Georges St-Pierre at UFC 158 on Saturday night, Nick Diaz still managed to keep the attention on himself at the post fight press conference. And he didn't take much time to do so.
Strolling into the proceedings near the end, Diaz laid out some issues he had into Saturday's fight, but it was when he was asked about changing up what he does in training that he dropped a line that could come back negatively against him.
"I just have to do the best with what I have," Diaz said (transcribed by MMAJunkie.com). "You know what? I've never paid taxes in my life, I'll probably go to jail, no joke. And no one wants to hear that kind of talk and what's going on with me. I might as well just be a kid. I've had fight after fight after fight after fight, and you don't know what that does to somebody who didn't graduate high school.
"Take it into consideration for a second what three fights a year will do to you your whole life. And the only time you have some time off, it's not like it's a vacation – everybody's telling you you're this piece of s***, you're suspended, you ain't fighting this guy, you ain't fighting that guy, you have to come back and dance around a bunch of hard hitting people. It's a rough sport."
The comments were only somewhat shocking - it was coming from the mouth of Nick Diaz after all - but UFC President Dana White was simply concerned with Diaz after hearing them.
"What's sad is, he better go pay his taxes," White said. "He came out publicly tonight and said he's never paid taxes in his life? Holy s***. That's sad. You wanna talk about sad? That's sad. Somebody better handle that with this check and make sure that kid doesn't end up with nothing. There's a guy who's Nate and Nick's lawyer and seems like a decent guy looking out for them. I'll probably give this guy a call and tell him, 'Nick said he's never paid taxes in his life, and you probably want to start working on that f***ing Sunday morning, not Monday morning.'"
"If you saw his paycheck tonight, you wouldn't feel too bad for him. At the end of the day, Nick has been in the sport forever. He wanted a shot at the title, he got a shot at the title, and he got paid a lot of money for it."
Penick's Analysis: "On another edition of 'When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong..." Diaz saying "I might as well just be a kid" is fully appropriate, because that's what he is. He's a man-child. He complains about all these things that don't get done for him and how he doesn't have anyone helping him with things; well, you've got the money to hire people, Nick. You've got the means to change your lot in life. But that's not what he has opted to do. He doesn't seem to know how to be a responsible adult, and this is right in line with that. His anti-establishment nature has endeared him to a large subset of fans, but you can't feel sympathy for him when he comes out and says things like he did last night. It's insanity. He can change how things are in his life, and he can improve them. But instead he refuses to evolve as a person, and you get comments like those he gave last night.
[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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