Ex-Strikeforce champion Josh Thomson claims Nate Diaz turned down money from the UFC to keep quiet about a failed pre-fight drug screening.
The allegation from Thomson comes days removed from a report that Mark Hunt’s longstanding lawsuit against the UFC, Dana White, and Brock Lesnar was thrown out after six long years of litigation. Hunt alleged that the promotion was well aware of a positive pre-fight sample submitted by Lesnar days before their clash at UFC 200 in 2016 and intentionally kept the information quiet until after the event.
In the end, Hunt failed to prove that the UFC, White, or Lesnar had intentionally withheld the results, but according to Josh Thomson, it’s not the first time the promotion has attempted such tactics to preserve a big-money fight.
Speaking on his WEIGHING IN podcast alongside former UFC referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy, Thomson shared his thoughts on Hunt’s accusations and likened it to a situation where the promotion had allegedly attempted to sweep a failed pre-fight test from Nate Diaz under the table in 2019.
“I look at it this way, this is the thing. Look what they were trying to do with Nate Diaz,” Thomson said. “He tested positive, and they were like, ‘You know what, we’ll get it all sorted out after.’ And Nate said, ‘F*ck you, we’ll get it sorted out now.’ That means that they knew that Nate tested, and they were still gonna let him fight… So I would not say that they have not tried to do that, or would not do it.”
Nate Diaz Turned Down Money to Keep Quiet About His Failed Test
The incident reportedly occurred ahead of UFC 244 when Diaz was scheduled to square off with Jorge Masvidal for the BMF title. Diaz was flagged by USADA in October 2019 for a failed drug test, but it was later revealed that the positive result was due to Diaz using tainted supplements. In the end, the ‘Stockton Samurai’ was cleared of all wrongdoing, but according to Thomson, the UFC was more than willing to pay him to keep the results under wraps until after the fight.
“When I’m looking at [Lesnar], I mean I’m just thinking to myself that this was early in USADA,” Thomson continued. “I don’t know. I don’t wanna say that they knew, but I wanna say that the history – which I can only give you that case – is that they tried to have Nate still fight, and ‘We’ll deal with it after.’… I know people in Nate’s camp that said they even tried to offer money. They tried to like, ‘We’ll take care of it all afterwards, no big deal. It’s probably just a misunderstanding.’”
The bout moved forward as scheduled with Diaz suffering a doctor’s stoppage TKO following the third round.
Watch the full episode below:
Transcription by BJPenn.com
