Nate Diaz hasn’t forgotten who he was supposed to fight at UFC 279.
After facing main event opponent Tony Ferguson in Friday’s ceremonial weigh-in at UFC 279, Diaz had a message for his originally scheduled opponent Khamzat Chimaev.
“Tony has been around for a long time, we should have fought a long time ago,” Diaz said. “Khabib [Nurmagomedov]’sb****a** was afraid of him the same way this motherfucker***** was afraid of me yesterday. Here we punched him in the back and now he weighs nothing.
“Y’all know what it is. The real G’s come from California, America, motherfucker*****.
Diaz and Khamzat were involved in an altercation backstage at Thursday’s UFC 279 press conference, which was canceled after the incident.
Ferguson was moved from a main event bout with Li Jingliang to the headliner after Chimaev missed the welterweight limit by 7.5 pounds at Friday’s official weigh-in. That gaffe led to a line-up shuffle that saw Ferguson promoted to the main event opposite Diaz and Chimaev bumped to a catchweight co-main event against Kevin Holland. Both bouts are scheduled to be five-round contests.
For his part, Ferguson focused solely on the new confrontation.
“Grab your popcorn and blue slushees, dammit, because we’re going to have some fun!” Ferguson said.
Chimaev and Holland had a more tense matchup as they have a history of bad blood and were also reportedly part of Thursday’s backstage melee.
“Everything happened for a good reason,” Holland said after facing his new opponent. “All these guys who say they’re gangsters, they’re not gangsters. They make up for the HD cameras and that’s as simple as it gets.”
Holland was asked if the Chimaev fight was a better matchup, to which he replied: “F*** no, but it will be fun.”
Chimaev was met with a chorus of boos and did not apologize for his glaring underweight, instead claiming he was not allowed to cut any more weight.
“They stopped this shit,” Chimaev said before addressing the crowd. “I don’t know, I wanted to cut more of this shit. Hey, this is Chechnya’s mom, shut up guys. I fuck your boy, I fuck him backstage too.”
Like Holland, Chimaev was unnoticeable by the change in line-up.
“I don’t care, I want to crush everyone,” Chimaev said. “I’m coming here to screw everybody up, you know? I’m going to take over now.”
UFC 279 takes place Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.