The UFC wants Nate Diaz to sign a new deal before facing Dustin Poirier
Ariel Helwani has shed light on the issues that plague the Nate Diaz vs Dustin Poirier fight.
The two UFC stars have gone back and forth on social media ever since Poirier lost his Lightweight title clash against Charles Oliveira.
Diaz and Poirier were to meet a few years back before The Diamond pulled out of the clash citing injury. There seems to be unfinished business between the pair but the Stockton star suggested the UFC wasn’t keen on setting up the fight.
Diaz also has one fight left on his contract and there seems to be a big move form UFC regarding this. Helwani shared some insights on this deal and claimed that the UFC wants to extend the Stockton star’s contract before setting up the Poirier fight.
Helwani was speaking on The Ringer MMA show and said (h/t MMA Mania):
“Nate obviously wants the fight, Nathan wants to fight. Dustin wants the fight. The UFC actually wants the fight,” Helwani said. “But they want it with a caveat: they want to extend [Diaz’s] contract. And that’s going to be the push and pull in this whole scenario, right?”
“It’s ‘All right, you want this fight? Sign for more fights,’ right? ‘All right, you want this fight? Well we need you for one more.’ And the option that was thrown out was ‘All right, you want this fight, you have to add one more,’ and that would be the Conor fight, which is not a bad deal. But then they have to make sure that the numbers line up.”
Nate Diaz vs Conor McGregor 3 on the cards?
It makes sense for the UFC to try and get Diaz to sign another contract extension. The Stockton native is still one of the biggest draws in the promotion and with Conor McGregor returning into the fray, a trilogy would sell a ton of PPVs.
Diaz vs Poirier would be quite a fight too, and it would be a little crazy for the UFC to let the Stockton star leave after this fight.
McGregor and Diaz aren’t in the best of forms given that they both last their last two bouts. However, there are always fireworks when even one of them is in the Octagon.
A trilogy would be a great PPV for the UFC, and it will be interesting to see if they can set up Poirier vs Diaz first.
That would also do well given the rivalry between the two UFC stars.
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