Nate Diaz’s conditioning coach says even Nate was worried about his conditioning for Conor McGregor fight
Nate Diaz revealed after his bout with Conor McGregor that he was not training very hard before he got the call to fight “The Notorious.” In fact, Diaz was on a yacht in Cabo San Lucas hanging out with friends taking shots of tequila.
Damian Gonzalez, a pro triathlete and conditioning coach for the Diaz brothers was worried about Nate’s conditioning going into the five-round fight with the UFC featherweight champion and says Nate was worried himself, according to MMA Junkie.
“I think that he told Dana that really just to put them at ease, like, ‘Yeah, we’re in shape,’” Gonzalez said. “He can’t tell Dana, ‘I’m sitting here on the beach having a cocktail.’ You just can’t say that.
“So you can look at it that way – he needs to recover from his last fight so he can start training again and triathlon season is coming. So technically, yeah, but not exactly the way everybody spun it.”
Gonzalez said he got Diaz to the track to test his conditioning when he got the call to fight McGregor.
“I was worried,” he said. “He was worried. Everybody was concerned about his conditioning, especially the people around him.”
“He was going to cram in a lot of work in short time, but he needed to recover from it,” Gonzalez said. “Basically what we were doing was shorter workouts, but a lot of workouts throughout the day, doing short duration.
“But the volume was pretty high, with a lot of intensity and a lot of recovery. They can’t take any illegal supplements; they’re not really into all that stuff, so basically, it’s just, when you’re not working out, you’re recovering.”
Gonzalez also added that their game plan against Conor was to let the featherweight champ wear himself out.
“Conor is super explosive, and so for Nate, it was not necessarily his usual game plan of pressing the action,” Gonzalez said. “Because he knew the guy would come to fight. So it was more about letting him see what Conor has and conserve his energy and then adjust to that, and then pick it up.”
Seems like everything paid off for Team Diaz with Nate securing the highest payday of his career. If there was any time to celebrate on a yacht, right now would not be bad timing.
