MMA Mailbag: Cmon now, was the Nate Diaz cut really that bad?

Publish date: 2024-06-03

UFC 244 brought us the BMF title fight, a couple gnarly cuts, and a stoppage that inflamed the masses.

It also brought us some surprise wins and underdog moments. That gives us plenty to discuss in this week’s MMA Mailbag, so we might as well get to it.

The way it went down doesn’t feel like a loss for Diaz, at least from a fans perspective. Do you think the fight makers will agree and give Diaz the big fights he deserves or is he back to fighting chumps again? – Ben L.

If Nate Diaz has shown us anything, it’s that he has an uncanny ability to control his own destiny. The whole USADA thing before this fight was a good reminder, but so was his willingness to just sit out when he wasn’t feeling the terms or the fight offers. That guy is not going to let the UFC simply plug him back into the rotation on some random Fight Night events. No way.

That said, it’s not like he was winning this fight with Jorge Masvidal before it got stopped. I understand that the stoppage due to cuts was unsatisfying, but come on, the reason he got so badly cut up is because Masvidal was thumping him all about the face and skull area. Masvidal had won all three rounds on all three scorecards by the time it was stopped. You could argue that Diaz was denied the chance for a late comeback, but it’s not like Masvidal was fading.

So yeah, Diaz lost that fight in my eyes. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he falls to the back of the pack, though. With both Diaz brothers, the wins and losses were never really the point. Their personal brands are not built on that, so Diaz the younger won’t suffer too much here. If, that is, he decides he wants to fight again.

Why was that cut considered so dangerous? – Julius O.

Look, at the risk of expressing an unpopular opinion, I’ll just come right out with it: That was a bad cut. Matter of fact, it was two bad cuts, one below Diaz’s right eye and an even worse one above it.

Generally, doctors get worried about big, scary-looking cuts in the eye area. Vision is an important part of fighting and, well, life. If you have a cut bleeding into your eye so that you can’t see punches coming, or if the cut is bad enough that it increases the odds of permanent damage to the eye in some way, that’s when doctors typically want to intervene.

Honestly, I’ve got no real objection to that stoppage. I get that it’s a bit of a letdown, especially since this one was supposed to be about the whole BMF thing, but that fight was going only one way, and you could have stuck a quarter through the slot in Diaz’s face by the end. No controversy there for me.

I keep hearing that state athletic commissions are to blame for these controversies. Is it really better for a promotion like the ufc to self regulate? Would a federal or international athletic commission be the better option? – Law C.

OK, this is a point worth discussing, because it’s entirely possible that this fight would have continued in Las Vegas. Regulators there see more fights and have more experience, all of which is bound to change the way you look at this sport. A cageside doctor in Vegas might have looked at Diaz’s eye and said, “Meh, I’ve seen worse.” (Officials in Vegas might also have been hip to various shenanigans on the scale without needing the internet to point it out to them, which could have been bad news for Kelvin Gastelum.)

Personally, I think the state athletic commission system of regulation, as a whole, flat out sucks. It’s a recipe for a disjointed patchwork of oversight in which the rules and the resources vary wildly from one place to the next. That’s not how we should govern an entire sport. It’s a damn mess, and it always will be as long as each state is left to handle this stuff on its own.

But self-regulation? That might be the one option that’s definitely worse. Promoters are always going to be driven by financial self-interest. Letting them write their own rules and be their own watchdog is just asking for abuse.

BMF wings return appearance a day or two later? As bad as you feared? – David H.

Masvidal to get the winner of Usman/ Covington? – Eric Z.

Sounds about right to me. People complaining about the stoppage are in danger of totally missing the fact that Masvidal looked really good in that fight. He bashed Diaz in the head with an elbow and then basically soccer-kicked him in the face a few seconds later. That’s a finishing sequence against most people (just not against a fellow BMF, apparently).

Whoever comes out of that Kamaru Usman vs. Colby Covington title fight with the belt, I say give Masvidal the next shot. And if that person happens to be Covington, then go ahead and hire some extra security too.

We heard Diaz and Masvidal speaking about their own retribution or resurrection, but I feel that redemption was a common theme at UFC 244, not just limited to the two BMF combatants. Kevin Lee silenced the critics who figured his best was behind him. Corey Anderson derailed of young prospect that the UFC seemed high on. Stephen Thompson proved that he is still not to be trifled with, even among the young bucks at welterweight. Darren Till displayed real staying power in his new middleweight division.

Which of these redemption narratives do you believe carries the most gravity (divisionally and more broadly) and why? – Joshua B.

That’s an excellent point. UFC 244 did see an uncommonly high number of wins from people who either really, really needed one or else had their backs against the wall in some other way.

Of those, I say the biggest one was Corey Anderson. Not only did he beat Johnny Walker in what sure looked like a 205-pound title eliminator, he finished him in the first round, which isn’t exactly the kind of thing he’s known for. I think if you’d told most of us that this fight was going to be over in about two minutes, we would have assumed that was good news for the other guy.

Is that going to vault Anderson straight into a title fight? Probably only if Dominick Reyes can’t make it. Still, it gets him one step closer, if only because it eliminates (for now) one of the options the UFC might have preferred.

A close second place for me, though, is Kevin Lee. No one (me included) gave him much of a chance against Gregor Gillespie. Style-wise, it just seemed like such a bad matchup for him. Then he goes out there and absolutely starches the Trump-loving Gillespie on a night when Trump himself is in the audience, then follows up with an Instagram post shouting out Bernie Sanders.

Yeah, that’ll get him some fans. Probably some haters too.

What do you think about DAZN pushing back the Canelo-Kovalev boxing match until after the BMF Fight was over? Jill D.

That was an interesting choice, especially since there’s not a ton of evidence that there’s really so much crossover between the two audiences. Maybe it was an overabundance of caution. Maybe it was done out of concern that, between DAZN and ESPN+, you’re really battling over the small slice of the viewing audience that loves this stuff enough to sign on for a bunch of different streaming services. Or maybe, when you’re already erecting these barriers between you and your audience, you just don’t feel like you can afford a single other obstacle.

What do you think of Darren Till admitting that he was so scared of the magnitude of the event that he considered pulling out of the fight? – Michael J.

I found it refreshingly honest, and I thought it probably did more than the fight itself to endear him to fans. Till is at his best (or at least most effective) as a frustrating counter-striker who uses his size and range to control the distance. That’s a hard style to deal with, but it’s not always the most exciting.

After watching him get the win before admitting what a wreck he was going into this fight at such a crucial career crossroads, how can you not root for the guy at least a little bit? How can you not hear that and want him to be OK? Most fighters are too busy trying to play the tough guy at all times that they can’t admit to being scared and worried sometimes. Till’s willingness to tell it like it was helps us see that, some nights, being a genuine BMF is the minimum requirement just to get in there.

With everyone aside from Dana White clamoring to see Nate Diaz and newly-minted BMF Jorge Masvidal run their fight back ASAP, I think it might be best to let this one die off. The BMF title fight felt like a cultural moment, the perfect alignment of the stars where everything somehow just WORKED, something we can’t say to often in this batshit “sport”. From the callout in August to the massive media promotion, from the literal minting of a physical belt to the President of the United States making an appearance, it truly felt like a mythical comet has streaked across the bloody face of the MMA landscape and will not appear again for millennia. Do you two think the fight should be ran back, or should we appreciate the moment for what it was, let the scar tissue rebuild itself and move onto the next one? – Lance C.

(Top photo: Josh Hedges / Zuffa)

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MMA Mailbag: Cmon now, was the Nate Diaz cut really that bad?