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Nate Diaz will never fight at 155 again, and he’s been telling us for awhile

AARON WEINBAUM, AARONSAYSWHAT.COM

June 12, 2019

Nate Diaz recently declared that he was moving on from fighting at lightweight, but Aaron Weinbaum has been declaring this since September 2018.

On June 3rd of this year, Nate Diaz made a prominent return to Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show. During that epic interview, Ariel asked the question about Diaz returning to 155 pounds. Nate had quite an answer: “There’s nothing for me there. I already did everything, beat everybody. I’m the king of that division.”

If only someone had predicted Nate Diaz would never return to lightweight…. oh wait, I did. I have been telling everyone within ear shot since September of 2018. Here’s the breakdown:

It all stared with one Tweet after a press conference, where it was announced Nate Diaz and Dustin Poirier would be squaring off in a co-main event bout.


Then came two more ominous tweets:

https://twitter.com/NateDiaz209/status/1045474717660983296

Then came Dustin’s response:

From there the two seemed to be trying to make their own championship main event for a 165 pound division that didn’t exist.

All I could see was red flags. My only thought about the theatrics was Nate did not want to make 155 pounds. I first made the proclamation on my “MMA Fight Picks” podcast. Here is a audio clip of the first time I made my opinion public.
Nate Diaz never makes 155 pounds again… I don’t know that he can make 155 pounds and here’s why so forgive me for reading here.. He’s getting older, he has not made the weight since December 2015-Aaron Weinbaum,“MMA Fight Picks” podcast, Sept. 29, 2018

You can hear the full episode introduction on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bellator206-mma-fight-picks/id1337192091?i=1000420712002 or https://aaronsayswhat.com/mmafightpickspodcast.html.

Here’s why I have been predicting Nate was done with lightweight for almost 8 months. Let us not forget, that from March 2010 to April 2011 he had a stint at welterweight, because he said he didn’t get paid enough to cut all that weight.

Here is a January 2010 quote Nate made to MMA Junkie (full article here https://mmajunkie.com/2010/01/nate-diaz-clarifies-weight-cutting-remarks-sees-future-at-lightweight-and-welterweight) “It’s just a possibility,” Diaz today told MMAjunkie.com(www.mmajunkie.com). “I’m not going to permanently go, but I could probably jump around. If I want to make (155 pounds) all year long and be starving and miserable for that long, I’d probably want to get paid more. Until I start getting paid more, maybe I should ease up a weight class.”

After Nate returned to lightweight, he won a few fights and earned a title shot with Benson Henderson in December 2012. What you may not remember is Nate initially weighed in at 156 pounds, one pound over the championship weight of 155 pounds. Nate acted surprised that there was not a one pound allowance for a title fight, but there is no way his team didn’t inform him.

In December 2014, a fight against Rafeal dos Anjos, Nate missed weight badly, weighing in at 160.5 pounds. Nate is getting older and hasn’t made the weight since December 2015 for his fight against Michael Johnson.

If we have learned one thing about MMA weight cutting, the older you get, the harder it is to get the weight off in a healthy manner.

To keep up with Aaron Weinbaum, check out aaronsayswhat.com

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