Nate Diaz Reveals Root Of Contract Dispute With The UFC

“I went to sign this contract to fight for the title against Henderson, and when I went to sign my contract, they were locking me down for eight fights for sh-tty pay. I was like, ‘This is a world title fight, and you’re going to pay me this chump change?’… I’m like, ‘OK, this is ridiculous, still, because this is a world title fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. That means I’m fighting to be the No. 1 fighter in the world at 155 pounds.’ I think it’s ridiculous because the No. 1 in any sport is probably a millionaire – in golf, in tennis and in soccer.

“Hector Lombard and Eddie Alvarez were with Bellator at the time and were offered hella money to come over. Eddie Alvarez, I know who he is, but nobody else does, and he was going to get paid like 20 times more money than I was going to get to fight for a world title. So I was going to sign to fight for a world title for not even a tenth of what this guy was getting? I don’t think I could sign that contract, so I went in there, and they said, ‘We’re not paying him that much. That’s rumored.’ And I was like, ‘I know you’re paying him this much, and you can’t even double or triple or just change things a little bit to make me happy? What if I became the champion?’ They’re like, ‘Get the championship, and you’ll get this and you’ll get that.’”

“I was real negative about the situation, and it was two weeks out from the fight, and … (White) was like, ‘Look dude. Whenever you’re not happy with your contract, whenever you’re not happy, just let me know, and we’ll renegotiate. I was just so focused on fighting, I was going to fight and they knew I was going to fight. I signed the contract. But he sold me over with that, ‘Anytime you’re unhappy, let’s renegotiate. We will renegotiate.’”

“I signed it, very unhappily, and I went into the fight and I lost, so what am I going to do? Go cry over spilled milk? I wasn’t going to go cry for more money now that I just lost. I understood that. I was thinking I should have won and got a new contract, but what’s done is done.”

“(Nurmagomedov) was supposed to fight Gilbert at the time, and then when things weren’t working out with their whole contract situation, they asked me if I would fight Khabib. I just beat Gray Maynard. Then when they asked me (to fight Khabib), I thought, ‘Now’s a good time to come back to the old thing they said.’ So I said, ‘Hey, I’ll fight Khabib, but is it possible for me to renegotiate my contract?’”

“They told me I could renegotiate whenever I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy the entire time. So now I felt like it was a good time. They’re asking me to fight a guy, so I said, ‘I’ll fight him, but can I renegotiate?’ Then they blew me up all over the social media saying I turned down the fight. They’re all saying I turned down this, I turned down that, but I never turned down any fight ever in my entire life.

“I felt like it was a favor. ‘This didn’t work out with this, so yeah, I’ll fight the guy. Can I renegotiate since you told me I could already do that?’ You know what else? They could have simply said, ‘No.’ And I would have said, ‘Ah, f-ck it.’ Then I would have gone and fought the motherf-cker. They could have said, ‘No,’ but instead, I read it all over the Internet, and I feel like it was kind of a coverup. No one paid attention to anything. I was trying to let it be known what happened with that. I got the sh-t end of the deal on that one.”

“I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of for a lot of years with the whole situation. More so because I kind of grew up in this, and I didn’t understand or know what was what with money and contracts, and what was happening, until one morning I woke and for some reason I was like, ‘Hold up. I’ve been really under-appreciated, underpaid, under-all-kinds-of-shit.’

“I wanted to try to get my situation fixed. I was trying to get a fight going on, but at the same time I didn’t want – it was a whole mess going on. But everything got cleared, up and I’m ready to get back to work and do my thing.”

in a recent chat on, “You’re Welcome With Chael Sonnen“, Nate Diaz discussed the contract dispute with the UFC that saw him out of action for more than a year.

Diaz returns to the fold against Rafael dos Anjos on Dec. 13.