NATE DIAZ IS eager to complete a trilogy of fights against Conor McGregor, but says he won’t go begging for it.
The Californian handed McGregor his first UFC defeat back in March before losing out to the Dubliner by majority decision five months later at UFC 202.
Despite not being offered tickets, Diaz attended UFC 205 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night as The Notorious made history by adding the lightweight belt to his featherweight title with a second round TKO of Eddie Alvarez.
And the 31-year-old believes he was intentionally kept away from the limelight by the promotion.
“It’s a little bit unofficial, it’s handed over,” Diaz said in an interview with ESPN. “It was good timing for him and he did everything right and they handed it right to him.
“It was funny how I got left out the picture though. He went through the fight like I expected he would, especially against that guy. I thought the fight would go exactly how it went. I figured that.
“Then as soon as the fight’s over, I see like 100 people just turned around and staring at me like ‘what do you want me to do?’”
The UFC didn’t even want to give me tickets to this fight. I think they wanted to just put this picture of him with the belts and it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.
“They wanted to keep me out of the mix and hide me out from the whole thing. It might have been in his contract, ‘don’t let Nate Diaz in here’.
“I was up in the stands in the seat in the club box. After the fight, everybody’s turning and looking at me. It’s not my call. These guys are hiding me out up here. I think they gave Nick Jonas my seat!”
Speaking on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, McGregor’s coach John Kavanagh suggested that he would personally like to see a lightweight title fight with Diaz — a match-up the Stockton brawler is interested in too.
“I know what happened in a fight with me and him the last time,” Diaz added. “He knows what happened and people know what happened.
“People are asking me ‘when are you going to fight number three?’ and ‘do you want number three?’ and of course if I do anything, that’s what I wanted, the third fight.
“I’m not begging for no fight. It’s all good with me. I don’t need to fight.”
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