Daniel Cormier promises he doesn’t have an issue with Nate Diaz but when the one-time “BMF” title challenger takes aim at him, he’s going to respond.
During an appearance on Theo Von’s podcast, Diaz decided to blast Cormier about his job as a color commentator and analyst while saying the UFC Hall of Famer must be jealous that he didn’t make as much money during his career and calling him a “f*cking bitter little bitch who’s analyzing fights.” On Wednesday, Cormier fired back while reminding Diaz that he earned
his position as a commentator on the sport with championship credentials after claiming titles in two divisions in the UFC.
“Nate Diaz, I think is reacting to what I said about him and Mike Perry’s fight and saying that I was excited about it because I know exactly what it is,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “He said we pretend to know everything when in reality we don’t, I don’t know everything. I don’t know everything about fighting but what my job is to try to educate people who may not be as close to it as I am in terms of what fighting looks like inside of the octagon. We all think that we watch it and we all think we know what we’re doing when in reality, there is some details inside of fighting that is just known at a different level. That’s it. That’s my job. That’s my job to do.
“Nate clearly doesn’t like when we do that job. I’m talking me, Dominick Cruz, Michael Bisping, Paul Felder, all these different people.”
But Cormier didn’t stop there because he also reminded Diaz that there’s a vast difference between them when it comes to their careers.
While Diaz was always very popular and eventually ascended to a new level of stardom following a pair of fights against Conor McGregor, Cormier was much more concerned with winning championships, which is exactly what he did multiple times over.
“Let’s do that for a second. Let’s compare us,” Cormier said to Diaz. “Jon Jones. Stipe Miocic. That’s it. Koji Oishi, Hermes Franca, Clay Guida, Joe Stevenson, Gray Maynard, Rory MacDonald, Benson Henderson, Josh Thomson, [Rafael] dos Anjos, Conor McGregor, [Jorge] Masvidal, Leon Edwards. That’s 13 times. That’s 13 times to 13 people. This is mine. This is who I lost to — two people. I, in my life, I’m telling you for me, it’s hard for me to fathom losing to 13 people in the sport that you chose and when I lost those fights, I was in my mid-to-late 30s and two dudes were able to get me. You lost to 13 people. You were losing fights in your 20s. You were in your absolute athletic prime, in the sport that you chose, and you got beat multiple times by all these people. I was being respectful.
“But you lost to 13 people. In the sport that you chose! That to me is crazy! I said yesterday that’s impossible. Somebody corrected me and said, no it’s not impossible. You can lose that many times.”
Of course, Diaz is entitled to his opinion but Cormier just doesn’t see how he can unleash this unhinged diatribe without taking a serious look in the mirror and the career he put together.
“You’re up here acting like you’re mad because somebody is talking about how you’re average,” Cormier said. “The reality is you’re average. You’ve always been. But you made a lot of money. That’s good! But you’re average. You can talk all you want now but it will never change the fact that you cannot go back in time, we can’t go back in time and make you better than you were.
“So you keep punching above your head. You punch at Khabib [Nurmagomedov]. Not the same. Khabib should have never paid attention to you. You were never going to get there. You punch at Justin Gaethje. You punch at my man Dustin Poirier. You’re punching above your head. All these dudes had titles. Let it go.”
During his appearance on the podcast, Diaz also claimed Cormier “can’t fight for shit” and then called him a “f*cking big old p*ssy” because he cried after suffering a knockout loss to Jon Jones (that result was later overturned to a no-contest when Jones tested positive for a banned substance).
Cormier wishes that perhaps Diaz showed a little more emotion during his own fights and perhaps he wouldn’t have suffered 13 losses during his career.
“Nate, maybe you should have cried more and then maybe we would think you care about winning and losing,” Cormier said. “Maybe if you cried, Nathan, you wouldn’t be so OK with losing. Because I cried because losing to me was like death. That’s why I cried.
“You don’t cry. You go to the afterparty, you go hang out with your friends. You get beat on a Saturday, on Monday you’re talking again like you’re the best in the world. Maybe if you cried, we would think that you cared and winning and losing really mattered because I’m telling you, it doesn’t feel like it when it comes to you.”
As far as Diaz making more money during his career, Cormier chalked that up to the lowest hanging fruit possible when it comes to trying to lob insults at somebody, especially after they both made millions during their respective careers.
“I believe that the lowest form of insult is when you have one guy that is doing really well insult the other guy that’s doing really well by saying ‘I’ve made more money than you,’” Cormier said. “Because at what point does having money, mean you just have money? Seriously. I made the most money in my biggest fights. I fought Jon Jones and that’s where I made the most money. Nate Diaz fought Conor McGregor. When Nate Diaz was fighting before he fought Conor McGregor, he could not have said ‘I made more money’ than anybody. He’s making good money but Conor McGregor, as he has done with many people, elevated Nate Diaz and that’s good for him because he made money.
“I heard Nate Diaz is making $10 million to fight on this fight card. Yes! To me, that makes me happy. But again it’s not like I’m sitting over here struggling. I’m doing fine.”
Cormier said repeatedly that he didn’t want to go after Diaz in that manner but he couldn’t stand by while he was insulted for doing his job.
As far as potentially running into Diaz at some point in the future, Cormier promises he would happily hash it out with him in person but he’s not trying to transform this war of words into some kind of ugly brawl.
That said, Cormier knows he wouldn’t shy away from saying the same thing to Diaz face-to-face as he’s now said over the internet.
“I hate when I’ve got to do this,” Cormier said. “Again, I don’t dislike Nate Diaz but that’s my real feelings. That’s how I feel about Nate and I would tell Nate the same thing to his face. Guess what? I’m not going to jump around and act like I’m going to fight him in the street and have an entourage of people jumping and screaming, throwing stuff. I’m not doing all that.
“But if you ask me what I feel about him and his career in my face, I will tell him you’re average. Because that’s exactly what you were. You won 21 fights and lost 13. To a guy like me, that seems impossible. Maybe it’s not but to me, it seems impossible.”
