It appears that Cesar
Gracie won’t be part of Nick Diaz’s
camp for his upcoming fight against Vicente
Luque at
UFC on ABC 7 in Abu Dhabi on Aug. 3.
Advertisement
Diaz’s longtime coach doesn’t like a few aspects of the booking,
including the overseas travel and the matchup against Luque. It
will be Diaz’s first Octagon appearance since a third-round TKO
loss due to retirement against Robbie
Lawler at UFC 266 in September 2021.
“I’m really not involved in that fight. I’m going to be perfectly
honest with you. That wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t a fight I would
have had,” Gracie recently told Submission Radio. “Like if I was advising Nick, I
wouldn’t have advised him to do that fight. It’s in Abu Dhabi. I
wouldn’t advise to go fight overseas at this point, especially
[because] Luque is a very tough guy. You know Nick is a tough guy,
but it just doesn’t make that much sense for me where Nick is at in
his career.
“And I don’t know. It’s not the fight I would have made. I don’t
even know what’s going on with that fight to be honest with you. I
speak to Nick. I spoke to Nick today a little bit, and yeah, I
don’t have any plans for that fight, to be honest with you. I don’t
even know what’s going to happen with that one to be honest with
you.”
While Gracie says he does have regular contact with Diaz, it’s not
necessarily related to the upcoming fight. As a result, he doesn’t
have much insight into the former Strikeforce champion’s
mindset.
“I haven’t been part of his training for this one. I’m just not,”
Gracie said. “We talk every day, and I don’t know what’s going to
happen with that, to be honest with you. I don’t. It’s a tossup
what’s going to happen. And like, again, I think the camp, our camp
in general, we haven’t been as involved like we are with other
stuff.
“And so I don’t know what Nick is doing. I know he’s lost a lot of
weight and everything, but I don’t really see him training with
fighters. And I don’t know what’s going on with that fight.”
According to Gracie, Diaz hasn’t been the same since the fight
against Anderson
Silva in 2015, when the Nevada State Athletic Commission handed
him a lengthy ban due to a positive marijuana test. Diaz was
initially suspended five years, but he eventually
reached a settlement with the commission that reduced the ban
to 18 months.
“Nick in general after the Anderson Silva thing, there was a lot of
changes,” Gracie said. “When the commission took him out for years
with the weed ban thing, I think that kind of threw him for a loop.
He wasn’t in the gym because there was no reason fo him to be in
the gym. Suddenly he wasn’t hanging out with people from the gym.
It’s tough to be a guy like Nick Diaz. He’s such an icon of the
sport. He’s so famous and everybody wants a piece of him.” After
Gracie’s latest Octagon appearance, Gracie revealed that the
Stockton, California, native was
competing with two ruptured discs in his neck. However, Diaz
didn’t withdraw from the fight due to financial concerns.
Ahead of the fight against Luque, Gracie claims that Diaz hasn’t
been doing what he’d normally do during camp, though he is
apparently healthy. Instead, Diaz is not even in California.
“So it’s not that we’re not close — I love Nick obviously — we talk
every day…it’s just that I do things a certain way … He’s just not
really part of the training with the guys,” Gracie said. “Normally
right now he’d be training with Jake Shields,
he’d be training with his brother, he would hae been sparring. Nick
was not there [on Saturday] for Nate’s fight [against Jorge
Masvidal]. No bad blood or anything whatsoever. I think that
the people that are holding on to Nick in Texas, want to hold on to
Nick. I hope they take good care of him, that’s all I can say.
Diaz’s last victory came against B.J. Penn at UFC
137 in October 2011. He has since gone winless in four fights,
falling to Carlos
Condit, Georges St.
Pierre, Silva and Lawler.