Dana White denies any progress on Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal negotiations

Shortly after Nate Diaz defeated Anthony Pettis by unanimous decision at UFC 241, he set his sights on a scrap with fellow welterweight contender Jorge Masvidal.

“The reason I was off is cause everybody sucked,” Diaz said in the cage. “There was nobody to fight. But with this belt I wanna defend it against, Jorge Masvidal had a good last fight. All respect to the man, but there ain’t no gangstas in this game anymore. There ain’t nobody who done it right but me and him. So I know my man’s a gangsta, but he ain’t no west coast gangsta.”

Masvidal was immediately receptive of this potential matchup, as was the rest of the MMA community — including UFC President Dana White.

Speaking after Contender Series on Tuesday night, however, the UFC boss pumped the brakes on this Diaz vs. Masvidal fight, claiming that he never full committed to the matchup and explaining that negotiations for the matchup have not even begun.

“Why, did I say I was doing Diaz and Masvidal on Saturday (at the UFC 241 post-event news conference)?” White said (via MMA News). “Well … they asked me, and I said, ‘Who doesn’t want to see that fight?’”

“No, no progress [on negotiations so far],” White added.

These comments from Dana White are in contradiction to those made recently by Jorge Masvidal, who has claimed his team has already begun working on a fight with Nate Diaz.

“We’re just negotiating now, and let’s give the fans a fight that they want to see,” Masvidal said. “Two dogs, locked in a cage, going for the jugular.

“You know that I can get hit with a baseball bat, it don’t mean nothing, and same thing with my rival. You can hit that dude with a (expletive) baseball bat to the kneecaps, he’s going to keep coming.”

Do you think Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal will end up fighting?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 8/22/2019.