Searching for truth behind Nick Diaz
The mission to find the heart and soul of Nick Diaz, the most elusive and intriguing fighter in the UFC, has veered suddenly and unfortunately off-course.
Not because Diaz is feeling shy about answering personal questions, as the 28-year-old from the East Bay is sometimes wont to do. Not because he’s decided he doesn’t need any more distractions just days before he’s set to fight for the interim welterweight belt, this Saturday against Carlos Condit at UFC 143 in Las Vegas. And not because he has taken some sort of personal dislike to me, although I wouldn’t hold it against him if he did, given the unfair stereotype the media have bestowed upon Diaz as some crazed, angry thug.
No, our mission appears at risk because, quite simply, we can’t find the guy.
As the hours pass, as the texts and the phone calls go unanswered, it seems more and more likely that Diaz has done what he’d promised not to do: To “pull a runner.” He’d done that before, but in a far more important circumstance, when he was a no-show for press obligations before he was scheduled to fight Georges St. Pierre last year.
That time, UFC president Dana White pulled Diaz off the card. This time, though, Diaz seemed a new man. He seemed more willing to open up his life to the press, more willing to show UFC fans there’s a real person -- an honest, a genuine, even a kind-hearted person, albeit one not prone to idle chat or politically correct glad-handing -- behind the bad-boy stereotype that’s come to encapsulate his image.
And it’s a stereotype that, like it or not, is based on plenty of realities. Like the taunting of his opponents before fights. Or the double middle fingers Diaz loves to throw at cameras. Or the 2006 brawl Diaz got in at a Las Vegas hospital with the opponent who had beat him at UFC 57 hours before. Or the words a bloodied and bruised Diaz shouted into a camera moments after his dismantling of B.J. Penn back in October: “Where you at, Georges?” Diaz yelled toward his rival. “Where you at, mother(expletive)?”
Yet there is another reality about Diaz, too, and it’s this: There’s absolutely zero bull here. Nick Diaz is about loyalty, and loyalty means Nick Diaz either loves you or he hates you, and he’s going to tell you which one. He’s a fighter, all right? Fighters aren’t supposed to cozy up to their opponents, to shake hands and smile for the cameras and make believe they’re friends and then try and beat the living hell out of them the next day. That, to Nick Diaz, is disingenuous. That, to Nick Diaz, is lying. “In order to love fighting, I have to hate,” Diaz has said, a piece of wisdom that’s beautiful for its simple, stark truth. “There is no love without hate.”
Yet to find the more human side to this misunderstood fighter, it’s pretty clear that we need to find the fighter.
And so we wait. We call Ronda Rousey, an Olympic medalist in judo who is now one of the top-ranked female mixed martial artists in the world. When she was recently in Las Vegas, Diaz contacted her and said he wanted to train with her, to learn from her unorthodox takedown style: the highest compliment a fighter could give.
“I’ve never had a fighter I respect try to train with me and learn something from me,” she says. “As a woman fighter, it takes so much to get just a sliver of respect from my peers. ... He was nothing at all like what everyone makes him out to be, not full of himself at all.”
This is surprising: Nick Diaz, the bad-boy fighter with the biggest of chips on his shoulder, learned ankle picks and foot throws from a girl.
“No teammates ever ask me how to do something, especially men,” Rousey continues. “Nick’s open-minded, and he doesn’t care about how things might look, that people will say, ‘Oh, he’s getting takedown advice from a girl.’ He doesn’t care about his reputation or how people perceive him. He just cares about getting better.”
We wait some more. We drive an hour north to Sacramento, where UFC bantamweight Urijah Faber trains. Faber has known Diaz since 2004, has trained with him and taken advice from him, and calls Diaz “a fighting genius.”
“He’s one of the most loyal people you’ll ever get,” Faber says. “That comes off in a bad way, because where he comes from, he’s a loyal, loyal dude to the people who are tight with him. You don’t mess with his people.”
Faber considers Diaz an ally, but Faber’s not part of the tight-knit circle of fighters and hometown friends that surround Diaz and his younger brother, UFC lightweight Nate Diaz.
“The tightest-knit people in the world are groups that have enemies, something common to fight against,” Faber says. “So many people in the limelight are vulnerable for getting taken advantage of by all these hangers-on and blood-suckers, and you see it affect them over time ... Diaz knows what he wants, and he’s intelligent about it, and he’s not letting anyone else in.”
We wait, having all but given up.
But then, after sundown, a text pops up. It’s Diaz: “7:30 L.A. Boxing Brentwood.” A simple explanation: He’d slept in, he’d lost his phone, he’d been overloaded with laundry, he’d been in the midst of pre-fight medicals.
We spin the SUV around and haul toward Brentwood, a half-hour from Diaz’s hometown of Stockton. We pull into a strip mall near a Jamba Juice. Inside are people of all ages in a fitness boxing class. And there, jogging on a treadmill in a corner, we spot Diaz, the man whose stamina is second-to-none in the UFC because of all the triathlons he’s done.
He hops off the treadmill, lifts himself into the boxing ring, begins to tape his hands, and nods hello.
And then, the funniest thing: The elusive Nick Diaz smiles, and as he tapes his fists and stretches his legs and punches the air, he begins to talk. And he doesn’t stop.
He talks about how he started his serious MMA training with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but worked hard to make himself one of the most well-rounded fighters in the UFC: boxing, takedowns, grappling. He talks about his strict diet: no land animals, just fish, and only organic fruits and vegetables. Pesticides freak him out.
He talks about how he got into this dangerous line of work, growing up a Van Damme and a “Rocky” fan: “Aikido and karate when I was in first grade, karate in 4th, 5th, 6th grade,” he says. “And then in 7th and 8th grade, (go to the) backyard, drink a 40 and box with the Mexicans.”
Diaz laughs, and his smile lights up like a kid: “That did it,” he says. “Drink a forty on the couch -- the couch outdoors! Drink a forty outside and box.” He pauses a moment, then tells about those old red Everlasts they bought at the flea market. They were peeling apart, foam pouring out of them, and would cut your face all up. “You learn to have a mouthpiece,” he says.
As Diaz talks, I realize something about him: He doesn’t see himself as an entertainer, or as some famous dude, or as any sort of public personality, really. He’s simply a fighter in the purest sense of the word, and he wants to be the best fighter in the world.
And this is where people’s understanding of Nick Diaz the fighter veers off into a misunderstanding of him as Nick Diaz the thug: The best fighters are those who’ve been put upon in life, who only trust the people closest to them, who lash out at enemies.
When Diaz finds friends, he keeps them close. That’s why he’s stayed rooted in Stockton, a place he knows and is comfortable in: “It’s an easier environment to work in, to focus without as many distractions,” he says. “Travel is never a fun thing for me. I got stuff to worry about, you know? It’s a dangerous sport. It just enhances my sense of security being at home and doing what I have to do.”
So this is Nick Diaz: Not a bad guy, not by a long shot. And not some crazed thug. But just a hometown boy who made it big, who stays close to his longtime friends but remains wary of any outsiders. Ultimately he is who he says he is: A fighter who has to hate in order to succeed.
Inside the ropes, Diaz is getting antsy. “OK, it’s time to spar,” he says.
Diaz’s feet dance on the canvas, then his hands pummel his sparring partner in a flurry of jabs. His boxing coach shouts instructions: “Nick, over the top!” “Don’t let him lock in!”
“Don’t get wide with the hook!” “When you’re in there like that, throw that body shot, head or body!”
The training classes have left. The gym’s nearly empty. A Jay-Z song blares. Diaz circles his sparring partner, and his fists fly, as they will do long into the night. For this moment, the rest of the world has disappeared, and Nick Diaz’s only worries are right here, inside this ring.
You can follow Reid Forgrave on Twitter @reidforgrave, become a fan on Facebook or email him at reidforgrave@gmail.com.
