Part 2
World's Best Source For That Ol' Boom Bap
thaFormula.com - Now let's get into that fight with Karo because that was a great fight…
Nick Diaz - An ass whoopin', this guy took an ass whoopin’ in the fight. I know he can’t show that fight to people and be like “oh yeah look I did a good job.” Its like “damn yeah you sure lost though man.”
thaFormula.com - What did you think of his grappling skills though?
Nick Diaz - Oh no, he is an excellent grappler. I will not knock his judo or his grappling, but the fact of the matter is that I was in better shape then him in that fight. He took more punches, he took more damage, he ****ing whined and cheated saying I poked him in the eye. I never poked him in the eye. I was feeling him about to go right there too. That was my time you know I had him on the fence and it was the only time I grabbed him. If you notice also in this fight, I'm the only guy that he didn't do his judo on. If you ever notice on the video clip, it's got like him rushing me, double legging me. I'm the only guy he's ever fought in the UFC or any other fights that he never threw. He never threw me. He can't throw me, thrust me cause I won't grab him. I won't grab that mutha****a. I don't need to grab him to whoop his ass. He doesn't wanna fight me anywhere, on the ground or standing up. He didn't know what he wanted to do in that fight. He did all sorts of different **** trying to run away from me and stall. If that was Pride they would have yellow carded him and they never would have scored those takedowns and he would have lost. It's hilarious. I can go on all day about this and I'm like thinking there is just about no way to prove me wrong. I figure the only ones you can argue are the Riggs fight and the Diego Sanchez fight.
thaFormula.com -Now after your loss to Parysian, you came back to beat Fickett, Koji, and then came your fight with Diego Sanchez. It seemed like you might have underestimated Diego, seriously, did you?
Nick Diaz - Oh yeah, absolutely I underestimated him, but that doesn't mean I didn't train as hard as I would have anyways. I feel I could have done some things differently in training, but I could have only known that after the fight. I didn't have a good game plan going into that fight at all. I would have the total opposite game plan if I fought him again. It probably would be a totally different situation if there was a rematch with Diego Sanchez.
thaFormula.com - Have you had a chance to look at that fight again and when you watch it now, do you think that you won that fight, lost the fight, or how do you think it went?
Nick Diaz - Yeah I have watched that fight quite a bit and the important thing to me is if he would have won the fight or he was going to win the fight if the fight keeps going. Like if there is no time limit on this fight and this fight is going all night or basically if you throw us in the jungle together and only one of us is coming out, I feel like that night it would have been me. So this sort of thing is what's important to me and like I said before, Jeremy Jackson was a better man that one night. I give him his props for that, but Diego Sanchez is one of the best grapplers that I have ever had the experience of getting into the mix with. I knew he would be an excellent grappler from seeing a lot of his videos and I remember hearing about him. I remember he was my size though, and then he got heavier because I had a student of mine go up against him and he beat him by like 4 points or something. Rudy Hernandez was his name and he was a tough kid and lives in (Las) Vegas now. He used to train with me and went up against me. It was funny because Diego was in the Grapplers Quest and he was like in the novice or intermediate division and I was in the advanced division. I was like “man that’s funny,” because a lot of guys that night were afraid to get in the advanced division. So he was in the intermediate and I was in the advanced. Of course I didn't win, I got my guard passed by a really good jiu jitsu guy. I don't remember his name or I would plug him right now. Then Jake beat that same guy and won that tournament. Matt Hughes was in it that year and went up against a really good guy that I train with, his name is Val Ignatov. He is seriously one of the best grapplers I ever grappled with. He is basically by Sambo and Judo teacher as far as that goes.
thaFormula.com - But how do you feel that you underestimated Sanchez exactly?
Nick Diaz - Honestly, he looked like **** in every one of his fights as far as I'm concerned until he fought me. He looked pretty good against Brain Gassaway, but you can't really judge because I never seen Gassaway fight except for in that fight. I always wondered about Gassaway because I would see him hanging out with Shonnie Carter, but I didn't know if this dude ever fought before. Apparently he had a lot of fights, but I don't know where. So I didn't think he looked that great against Gassaway, but I thought he looked threatening or like a threat or that he was a good wrestler. I didn't take a lot of things into consideration like I should have and then see, these are the type of things that make me learn about what the UFC was and what it's all about and how it works. It's not like I was taught, it's not like we worked on these things about how I would lose the decisions and how I would lose with takedowns and how this sort of thing works. On the other hand, I'm sure a lot of these guys paid a lot of attention to that. A lot of their training was probably focused on stuff like this and rules and you know a lot of tricks and tactics and things like that about how the scoring is gonna go. I had no idea how that worked. I didn't know what a 10-9 or 10-8 round was, I didn't know what that meant. I never took that into consideration. Even until after the Sherk fight really. Actually before the Sherk fight is when I figured it out. Going into the Sherk fight is when I figured it out. But that's when I realized how that didn't matter because that just takes me out of my game now. It was crazy though, but I won that Sherk fight. That's a crazy one and you got to really watch that fight. I didn't take no knees, I didn't take no knees to the face. How do you score a guy’s aggressiveness or aggression? What the hell, so he was growling. grhhhhhh!! He growls at me or what do you call it? Like what, he did more work then me? I'm the one that ****ing put the defense on him. He didn't show nothing, I took him down, I showed more control on him, then he did on me and I landed more punches then him. He can know exactly what I was gonna do. If I was to fight him again I would even probably tell him and I bet you it would still happen, he wouldn't be able to stop it. I think he knows it too. But I'm not trying to knock Sean Sherk. Sean Sherk is another guy who is completely underrated and deserves to be a rich man and have millions and millions of dollars like ****ing De La Hoya or some **** because he is a ****ing workhorse and a ****ing soldier. If anybody was gonna beat me that night, it was gonna be that mutha****er and he deserves it if anybody did. So whatever on that one.