CONOR McGREGOR HAS been lauded for his seemingly subversive approach to training in mixed martial arts, but his next opponent has dismissed that ahead of their bout at UFC 196 in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
According to Nate Diaz, the importance McGregor places on movement is “nothing new”. The Irish fighter enlisted the services of Ido Portal as his movement coach for his December win over Jose Aldo, and Portal has also been involved in the build-up to this fight, working with McGregor in Los Angeles over the past fortnight.
“Everybody nowadays is like, ‘There’s this new movement stuff that Conor is bringing to the table’, but I was already [doing that],” Diaz says in the second episode of the UFC’s ‘Embedded’ series for Saturday’s event at the MGM Grand. “That’s what inspired us to begin with. They’re acting like he’s ahead of the game and jumping ahead of the game.”
The Stockton fighter points to his Brazilian jiu-jitsu background with the Gracie family, who developed modern BJJ. Diaz was awarded his BJJ black belt by Cesar Gracie in 2012 and trains regularly with the likes of Kron Gracie.
“See all that movement stuff that they’ve got going on, that they’re trying to preach to everybody? We’ve already got [it],” Diaz says. “It was Rickson Gracie [who] started that. I’ve got my partner here, Kron Gracie. He’s the one who comes over here and trains with me, helps me out a lot for the fight. Real martial artists are what we came from.”
Diaz adds: “I’ve already been there, done that. It’s nothing new to us. You might be fooling all these other people but we ain’t fooled by that.”
The latest episode checks in with McGregor in the final stages of the his training camp in LA, before he moves on to Vegas. There’s also a Gracie cameo here as the UFC featherweight champion meets the legendary Royce Gracie, the tournament winner at UFC 1 way back in 1993.
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