A petition to the White House to lift the ban on suspended UFC fighter Nick Diaz from the Nevada Athletic Commission has reached the threshold for a response.
Just days out from the 30-day deadline, the slapped together petition in favor of Diaz was short by a significant margin, but a late surge in interest and support pushed it well over the 100,000 signatures needed overnight and into Wednesday morning, and it currently sits at over 106,000 signatures.
Now that it’s reached that mark, it will be sent for review, and the White House is expected to respond from there. According to the petitions.whitehouse.gov site, the next step is as follows:
Once the petition reaches the required threshold, it will be put in a queue to be reviewed by the White House. Others can still sign the petition while it is awaiting a response from the White House. When the White House responds, everyone who has signed the petition will get email from the White House to let you know that we’ve reviewed and responded to the petition.
Whether anything can or will be done in Diaz’s favor remains to be seen, but given how far out from the mark he was into Friday’s deadline, it’s a bit of a surprise he got to that signature threshold at all.
Penick’s Analysis: I still don’t expect anything much to come of this, especially as it’s unlikely the White House is going to do anything about a state regulatory matter when the state’s governor has already taken the ostrich approach. On top of that, it’s unlikely there’s anything much they can do. The best the Diaz camp can probably hope for here is a strong statement in support of the effort, and further scrutiny and discussion being broached about the commission’s handling of the case, as well as on whether they effectively fulfilled their duties or not. The White House isn’t going to get Diaz reinstated to fight in the next six months to a year, it’s just not happening, but soon enough we’ll now get some type of response from the White House on Nick Diaz. That by itself is quite interesting to think about.
[Nick Diaz art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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