How Nate Diaz made his own path to the top

LAS VEGAS – He’s here, on top of the mountain, though the peak still isn’t high enough for Nate Diaz. He’ll make a career-high purse for facing Conor McGregor on Saturday in a rematch that serves as the main event of UFC 202 at T-Mobile Arena, but in typical fashion, he says he’s being shortchanged.

How much is he making to face McGregor?

“Not enough,” Diaz said at an open workout at Red Rock Resort on Thursday.

That’s been his refrain for most of his career. The paychecks weren’t big enough, he’d argue, and the opponents never significant enough. For much of his UFC career, he existed in this awkward place where fans revered him, but his bosses said he didn’t “move the needle.”

He’d sit out long stretches of time, ignoring his losses, brushing aside critics who couldn’t fathom why he was so willing to sit on the sideline, and insisting he wasn’t being treated fairly.

“I know what I’m worth,” Diaz said more than once.

He looked ridiculous to many for the stances he took, but as it turns out, Diaz had a good handle on his value. He knew that the frenzied atmosphere that surrounds his bout with McGregor on Saturday could be a regular occurrence, if only he got what he calls “the push” from the UFC.

It wasn’t a push from the UFC, however, that turned him into a massive star who suddenly found himself yukking it up with late-night talk show stars such as Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien. It was inconceivable 12 months ago that the producers of either of those shows would have thought for more than two seconds before deciding against booking Diaz as a guest.

It was too risky. He was an f-bomb machine who didn’t have a story to tell.

After his submission victory over McGregor on March 5 at UFC 196, however, the perception of Diaz dramatically shifted. He was in demand outside of the MMA bubble for the first time in his decade-plus career. He did a post-fight media tour that many would have said would be the most anti-Diaz thing ever, but he was funny and charming and insightful.

All of that was arranged by his new publicist, avid MMA fan Zach Rosenfield, of the powerful Los Angeles firm Stan Rosenfield & Associates. The firm represents a dizzying number of Hollywood heavy hitters, from George Clooney to Robert DeNiro, from Helen Mirren to Morgan Freeman.

Diaz hired Rosenfield after defeating McGregor, and it has proven to be an astute move. But for all of its clout, it’s not like Rosenfield put Diaz on top of the UFC mountain.

Diaz needed someone like McGregor, who’d challenge him in the cage and on the microphone, to bring out the best in him.

Rafael dos Anjos, then the UFC’s lightweight champion, was supposed to fight McGregor for the belt at UFC 196. In late February, while Diaz was on a cruise, dos Anjos broke his foot and was forced to pull out of the fight.

Desperate for an opponent to keep McGregor on the card, UFC president Dana White reached out to Diaz, who took the fight on 11 days’ notice and helped turn it into one of the sport’s biggest events ever.

Most opponents before McGregor treated Diaz and his older brother, Nick, deferentially and showed them great respect. The Diazes were seen as loose cannons with short fuses, and most fighters didn’t see the value in poking the bear.

But no one in MMA history is better at poking the bear than McGregor. And so, at a memorable February news conference at a UFC Gym in Torrance, Calif., to promote the new main event of UFC 196, McGregor began taunting Nate and Nick.

Without McGregor, who Thursday shouted, “[Expletive] the Diaz brothers! [Expletive] those cockroaches!” at a brief public appearance at Red Rock, Diaz would still be the angry young man brooding over the world’s inability to see his greatness.

But McGregor essentially was playing Diaz’s game. This is the world in which he existed and long excelled at, talking smack, playing mind games and trying to intimidate.

McGregor was trying to “out-Diaz” Diaz, and Nate wasn’t going to let that happen.

On Wednesday, a news conference blew up when McGregor arrived 30 minutes late. Diaz didn’t take kindly to being shown up and got up to leave. Before long, the fighters and their camps were hurling water bottles and cans at each other in an incident that is going to cost each of them a significant amount of money in fines.

Diaz, though, has never been the kind to be made a fool of, and McGregor frequently arrives late to send a not-so-subtle message about who is the king.

At his open workout, Diaz told the raucous crowd his side of the story.

“I’m here as a businessman, doing what I’ve got to do,” Diaz said. “I want to … act right, but I’ve got to stay true to myself, too. I believe that if a [expletive] comes in with his team like he’s the head-honcho [expletive], I’m going to let him know we’ve got a whole gang ready to ride.

“They came in like they were hot [expletive], but we’ve got a whole army here. It ain’t nothing I’ve never seen before.”

The fight isn’t a sellout yet, though White said, without elaborating, it was because “we messed up the tickets.” But he said it will have a paid gate of $8 million, which, if it hits that, will be the third-largest gate for an MMA show in the United States, behind UFC 200 ($10.7 million) and UFC 194 ($10.06 million).

Pay-per-view sales are expected to surpass the 1.5 million they hit for their first bout.

It’s heady territory for Diaz, whose contradictory and confounding words from years past now make a lot more sense. With the perfect foil, Diaz has become the superstar he always said he’d been. Now, the task is simple: He’s got to go out and do it again.

McGregor, of course, is still poking.

“We came here ready for war,” McGregor said Thursday, “not to throw little bitch bottles and go running.”

Diaz, though, won’t be running when the bell rings Saturday. McGregor knows it, and so does the fan base, which is why expectations for the pay-per-view are so high.

After all these years and all the battles, Diaz is now up there with the likes of McGregor and Ronda Rousey as one of his sport’s biggest names.

“I have to keep it real,” Diaz said. “I have to stay true to myself.”

He’s reached the top by staying true to himself.

He never sold out or compromised his principles. As Frank Sinatra so famously sang, Nate Diaz is on top and he did it his way.