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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Almost everyone watching last weekend's UFC on Fox 7 event was caught off guard by the violent stoppage finish for Josh Thomson against Nate Diaz, which included Diaz's corner throwing in the towel after he got cracked with a head kick and took a ton of strikes on the ground. However, as has become clear over the past couple of years, the Diaz brothers think differently than most, and Nate had a very interesting take on the bout on Thursday.
"He didn't come in there and he didn't put no ass whooping down on me, you know what I'm saying?" Diaz said in an interview with BJPenn.com. "He didn't come in there and make anything happen. I have never fought somebody before - I have never fought somebody who has ever wanted out of a fight so bad, you know what I'm saying? I was surprised because I went in there - I expected a fight, I expected him to come in and grab me and try to hold onto me or throw some kicks and move, throw some punches and move, but that mother****er was straight running and I had to chase his ass down. I was chasing him that whole fight, you know what I'm saying? I was the aggressor - and I felt I was reckless, you know, I went in there - and how can you not be against a guy who's running scared shitless for his life, you know what I'm saying?
“I went in there, I'm chasing him around, I'm over-aggressing trying to get a hold of him, and that's due to why I got hit with some shit you know what I'm saying, because I'm over-aggressing. I'm trying to meet the criteria to win these rounds; the way these rounds and these fights go, I just saw my brother lose to Carlos Condit chasing him around the whole fight, you know what I'm saying? I didn't think for a second that he lost that fight, how are you going to lose a fight when the other guy's backing up?”
He wasn't done. Despite the stoppage - and again, his corner throwing in the towel - Diaz argues that he wasn't out of the fight, and that he wasn't beat.
"My corner threw in the towel. The thing with that is, I don't blame anybody for stopping that fight; the ref was doing his job, he thought it looked like it was time to be over and my corner did as well. But at the same time, none of them were in there fighting," Diaz argued. "[Thomson] won, [he] did a good job getting the fight stopped, you know what I'm saying; he accomplished his mission, he got in there and got the fight stopped. But I'm going to tell you right now - from being in there, I'll tell you right now - he won the fight, but he didn't beat me, you know what I'm saying?"
"I'll tell you right now that I was all the way in that fight, but the ref - they thought it was time to stop the fight, you know? And whatever, he did a good job he's there to protect the fighters, and my corner too; I'm not mad at them at all for throwing the towel because the difference between our team and most people is that I got some real mother****ers in my corner, my real people who actually care about me."
Penick's Analysis: It's hard to even come up with a coherent reaction to this. The Diaz brothers have come off as delusional at times in the past, but this is to the extreme. Thomson beat him up for five minutes of that fight, and the "running away" in the early portions of the fight accomplished exactly what he wanted to accomplish. He got Diaz frustrated, and took advantage of that fact. Then he hurt him. Then he continued hurting him. Then he knocked him down, and earned a rightful stoppage. Thomson beat Diaz. It couldn't be any plainer than that. But Diaz apparently now has a different idea of what constitutes an actual loss in the UFC.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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