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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
After Nate Diaz made his derogatory Tweet towards Bryan Caraway last week, ultimately leading to a 90-day suspension and a $20,000 fine, it was the defense of the comment from his manager, Mike Kogan, that seemed to strike an even worse chord in many. And on Monday, Kogan decided to double down on that in an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. Here are his follow-up comments:
"Nate doesn't feel remorse for what he said. I don't feel remorse for what he said. I don't feel remorse for defending what he said or elaborating on what he said. Because it was not a homophobic statement. It was not intended to offend homosexuals. We weren't even talking about homosexuals. One can debate the multiple uses of this term. We can sit here and debate in the English language, there's a lot of words that mean a lot of different things, but whatever. As it is, it wasn't intended to be used the way people tried to twist the way it was being used. So therefore, what does he have to feel bad about? The fact that [Caraway] shouldn't gloat over other person's issues and try to kiss ass to make a point?
Did anybody ask Bryan Caraway about his stance on marijuana? No. Nobody asked Bryan Caraway anything. They just gave him the damn money because he was chasing after Dana all over Twitter begging for the goddamn bonus. Just take your money and go away.
If we would have made a homophobic statement, or a statement that was clearly intended to insult homosexuals, that's one thing. You come out and say, 'Hey, you know what, I'm really sorry it hurt people. We didn't mean to do that.' But to me, and this is just my philosophy, and I'm sure it's going to be disagreed with by many people. This is how I think, and how Nate thinks. The mere fact that there is a protocol to deal with these crisis situation implies its lack of sincerity."
Penick's Analysis: The entire point of Diaz's tweet was to emasculate Caraway, to say he was lesser for his actions. That he used a word commonly meant to impart those descriptions on a group of people or to equate those things to that group as an insult is exactly why that's not an acceptable thing to say from a public figure. They clearly don't get it, and Kogan continues to come off poorly the more he talks about it. If this was an attempt at PR damage control it's certainly gone the opposite way. But there's no point wasting much breath on the ignorance of Diaz and, clearly, his manager here; the concept is lost on them, even as Diaz now has a $20,000 less to his name.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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