From all of the footage that was obtained from Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley back in April, our video of Nick Diaz confronting Paul Daley after the title bout had the most views from any MMA source in the world. Yeah, I’ll wear that as a badge of honor, then remove it hours later because it doesn’t go with my outfit.
In the video, Diaz walks over to Daley in a restaurant and gives him props for the fight. They both show excellent sportsmanship, and then some English dude starts rattling off about something that neither of us could understand. We cut most of it from the clip because it was seemingly nonsense, but the final product is something you should rewatch.
Some of you claim the bout was stopped prematurely, others defend that the referee did exactly what he was supposed to do with the situation he was faced with. Well, Daley tends to side with the crowd that believes the ref made a major faux pas in this ESPN UK interview.
“I want a Diaz rematch. If Diaz loses to GSP and my fight’s for the title, I’ll get the title and then use it to line up a rematch with Diaz. I know it’s within my power to beat Diaz. It sounds stupid because I lost to him, but had I not have got caught with a certain shot around the two-minute mark, I wouldn’t have been fighting on instinct and the fight would have been a lot different.”
“A different ref, a different day… we’ve recently seen the Jose Aldo v Mark Hominick fight, we’ve seen the Shane Carwin v Junior Dos Santos fight. Those guys were in far greater trouble than I was and the fight was allowed to go on.
“John McCarthy refereed the Hominick fight and let it continue, but he was different with me. He stopped it with three seconds to go, yet when I landed six shots after Diaz face-planted he didn’t even bat an eyelid. There’s frustration about that because I think McCarthy is a good ref, but there is no consistency.
“If you’re gonna let a fight continue when Hominick’s got a big f***ing lump on his head and on numerous times he’s in bad spots, you can’t stop a championship shot with three seconds to go. I had my guard up, I was kicking Diaz’s legs… had Herb Dean been refereeing I think the fight would have been allowed to continue.”
Maybe he has a point. I need to re-watch the match to do some further investigation. Unfortunately, my Inspector Gadget hat is misplaced so there will be no analysis nor will there be a helicopter composed entirely of yellow gloves in the near future. [Source]
