Look guys, I know I'm about to really get into the weeds here, but I just can't help myself when it comes to Nick Diaz topics. The "Nick Diaz Army" photo isn't the profile picture for this blog's twitter and instagram for no reason after all. Now, there's a lot of explaining that will be required before I can even get into Nick potentially fighting Kevin Holland, so I'm not going to waste time. Let's get right into it.
Ok, so let me sort of lay things out here. As far as I know, Chael Sonnen on his youtube channel is the one that started the rumor that Nick Diaz will be fighting Kevin Holland if and when he returns to the octagon, which comes soon after Holland announced he will officially be moving to welterweight after mentioning it at times in the past. I did a brief google search and it seems that everyone else who's already written something on this is giving Chael credit for breaking the news, so I'm going to go with that. If you're a returning reader, it's no secret that I watch his videos every once in awhile, so I'm not breaking any news there. I'll maybe reference something he says in passing, but I don't like just ripping off topics from his videos because that just doesn't seem right. In this case, I feel like I don't have a choice since he is actually bringing new information to the table. In his video, Chael says that he has received information that the UFC is interested in booking Diaz against Kevin Holland and then he goes on to explain how he likes this idea and the fight should happen. Now, if you're a fan who was watching the sport while Nick was in his prime, you already know this is the most ridiculous thing you've read this month, if not all year.
I probably don't need to tell you why this makes no sense, but I'm going to anyways because I need to get this off my chest. First of all, Nick Diaz is 38 years old and the last time he fought before his latest Robbie Lawler fight, I was a freshman in college and had turned 19 a few months prior, I am now 25. Kevin Holland on the other hand is 29 years old and was 5-0 in 2020 and 0-2 with a no contest in 2021. Kevin Holland has 8 fights in the last 2 calendar years. To go back 8 fights for Nick Diaz takes us back to his decision victory over KJ Noons in strikeforce in 2010. Additionally, Nick Diaz was I guess knocked out in his last fight, even though he really wasn't, he just sort of decided not to continue, but we'll say TKO. So Nick was TKO'd by Robbie Lawler, who, while being a former champion, had lost 4 in a row prior to the Diaz fight. His fight preceding Diaz was a unanimous decision loss where he lost all 3 rounds in obvious fashion to Neil Magny. In Holland's epic 2020 run, he won 4 of those fights by finish including knocking out aging legend and since retired Jacare Souza with hammer fists from the bottom and also knocking out Joaquin Buckley so dramatically that both Buckley and his mouth piece almost flew out of the cage. Now, with all of that information, does matching up these two sound like a good idea in literally any way? Let's take a legend of the sport who is universally loved by 99.9% of the fans who is past his prime and hasn't fought all but a couple of rounds in 5 years and put him in the cage with one of the most explosive knockout artists that the UFC has in his division. Right. Good plan.
The problem here is that Chael is not a journalist. Additionally, all of Chael's videos are done in character. If you're not familiar with him or his channel, Chael doesn't do his videos as the real Chael Sonnen. He sort of puts on the character that he was during the press conferences during his fighting career. This really adds a weird layer to things because it's hard to know what to take at face value from him because it's in character, but that's part of the fun of his channel in the first place. However, when he starts reporting news, that is usually done by someone who has a built up credibility in doing so. Reporting news while in character is sort of odd because we don't know how to receive this information. The way I see it, there's three possibilities here and I'll go through them all.
The first of which is that all of this is true and Chael is reporting legitimate information. While it's possible, I really hope this isn't the case and I don't really think it is. It makes sense that the UFC would want to make another star off of Nick Diaz's name and elevate them to star status, but why Kevin Holland? Holland has already worked himself into 2 main events and has never fought at 170 lbs. Holland's last fight was against Kyle Daukaus, which isn't exactly a fight that suggests they're trying to push someone to mainstream stardom. If they were going to try and get someone over on Nick, wouldn't they have tried to do it in his comeback fight? No one thought Nick would ever fight again and then he came back. No one assumed he's going to fight a second time in his career resurrection. If they wanted to make someone else a star, I assume they would have tried to do it in the only fight they were guaranteed to get with Nick. Additionally, I think the UFC is realistic with Nick. They throw Nate into the octagon with people he's a huge underdog with all the time. His last fight was against Leon Edwards on a 8 fight win streak, but they gave Nick a fight against Robbie Lawler coming off of 4 consecutive losses. The UFC knows Nick and wants to put him in there with people who are on his own relative level and a fight versus Kevin Holland is just two guys in drastically different places of their career. I think if they did this, it would do more harm to the UFC than good for the long term value of Kevin Holland. Sure, a win over either Diaz brother would give Holland some rub, especially in the short term. I would argue that putting Nick in that situation would get so much blowback that it would actually hurt the UFC. Putting Nick in a situation where they're willingly compromising his health in a dangerous way for the sake of selling tickets and trying to put Kevin Holland over wouldn't go well with fans at all. Like I said earlier, Nick is almost universally loved by literally every fan, having him get put out cold by Kevin Holland is not what people mean when they say they want to see him fight again. I really don't think the UFC would give him Robbie Lawler the first time and then turn around and give him an even more difficult opponent after his performance in that fight.
The second option is that Chael was just given bad information and reported it anyways. This is what I think is actually the most likely option. In a typical scenario, a reporter would be given information by a source and the reporter would then have to consider the credibility of the source and the information and decide whether to make that information public. The reporter may also opt to try to confirm that story with a second source so that they have the same story coming from two different places. As I mentioned, Chael is not a reporter and is not bound to the principles of journalism. Seemingly, Chael had a conversation with someone he trusts and he was given this information and said it in his video. If we don't see this fight happen, it's possible that this was an idea thrown out to the UFC by Holland's side or Diaz's side, but didn't get made. It could also have just been an idea that someone within the UFC threw out there in a meeting one day. Just because it was discussed doesn't mean that they actually are considering making that fight. I think the most likely case is that there was some type of conversation that occurred where both Holland and Diaz's names were mentioned and the information was slowly altered as it got passed from person to person and by the time it got to Chael it was conveyed as "the UFC is trying to book this fight".
The third option is that Chael completely made all of this up. I get that Chael is in the business of controversy and clicks. I get that he's in character for all of his videos. I still don't think this is something he would do. His sponsorships have gotten a little odd lately, but I don't think he's desperate enough for clicks on his video to just randomly make up fights. Even if he was, why would he have used Kevin Holland? Why not use Masvidal or someone who would have really peaked interest? I know Chael isn't a journalist and doesn't know or follow journalistic principles, but I do think he is above just fabricating a story and passing it off as true information he was given. He usually mentions when he is speculating, so I don't see why he would all of the sudden stop that now.
Regardless of which of these options is the actual truth, the most important thing is that this fight does not get made. I think we as the MMA community need to really push back hard against this one. It's not ok for older fighters to just be thrown to the wolves and get destroyed by much younger and more dynamic opponents because they need the money. Maybe Nate is an exception, but he's literally the one guy who can take on this top ranked opponents and the audience buys in because of moments like the last minute of the fight against Leon or the upset win over Conor. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we don't want this fight. We want to see Nick against competition that is more his equal. There are plenty of guys for him to fight. We don't need to see him against Jorge Masvidal or Kevin Holland. I truly hope that we never see this fight happen because it would just be unfortunate for everyone.
What do you guys think? Does anyone actually want to see this fight? Who do you want to see Nick fight next? Who should Kevin Holland fight next if he moves to welterweight? Let me know any and all thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading everyone.
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