As social media star Jake Paul and MMA legend Anderson Silva were getting ready to mix it up inside the squared circle, Nate Diaz was causing chaos backstage.
Following his win over Tony Ferguson at UFC 279, Nate Diaz walked away from the UFC after 15 years with the promotion. Showing interest in trying his hand at boxing, the Stockton Samurai already helped set the stage for a showdown inside the boxing ring with the YouTuber turned professional boxer, Jake Paul.
Backstage at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, a video clip surfaced online showing Diaz and his entourage getting physical with Jake Paul’s crew. ‘The Problem Child’ took exception to Diaz’s actions and called out the Ultimate Fighter alumni in his post-fight interview on Saturday night.
“He tried to come into my locker room and cause some sh*t then he always leaves the f*cking arena so Nate Diaz, stop being a b*tch and fight me,” said Paul.
Former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier discussed the backstage scuffle that occurred between the two entourages and Paul’s subsequent callout during a recent episode of DC & RC on EPSN.
“There is no way Nate Diaz is afraid. Nate Diaz went to the fight, but Nate Diaz, if he slapped the guy, which it looked like he did, was intending to fight the guy. Nate Diaz isn’t there to just to build promotion. If you’re gonna [fight], he will fight you in the ring in the Octagon or on the streets. It’s just who Nate Diaz is.”
Nate Diaz slapped Jake Paul’s dad backstage#SilvaPaul
— ricky~dooby (@rick_doobs) October 30, 2022
Daniel Cormier Shared His Own Awkward Interaction with Nate Diaz
Daniel Cormier shared a brief encounter he had with Nate Diaz recently at the UFC APEX in Las Vegas. The tension between the two stemmed from a comment DC made on his ESPN program indicating that had Diaz fought Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 279, things would not have gone well for the Stockton native. Diaz didn’t take kindly to the comment, telling Cormier to, “Respect your OG, you fat motherf*cker,” on Twitter.
“If there are words spoken, he ain’t gonna run away. Even like I told you the other day, he came up to me in the APEX whenever I went with my son. Now, he was smiling. I don’t know if maybe that was because the kids were there. If it were just me and some other adults, maybe it would have been different, but he came and he told me, ‘Hey man, dude with a dude, beat me in a wrestling match, not a fight,’ because that’s his thought. He didn’t shy away from coming up to me to speak to me as most other fighters do.
“He isn’t afraid of Jake Paul and that will make for a lot of money between these two because this kid, for all that you think, he’s a fantastic young promoter. He does a great job of building an event. People seem to want to tune in to what Jake Paul is doing as they do with Nate Diaz. If they are to fight, I will tap in again. I’m constantly buying Jake Paul’s events right now because there’s a lot that surrounds it. Even if you want to see him win or you want to see him lose, you tune in and it’s making the kid a ton of money.”
