DALLAS — Nate Diaz likes to fight. He doesn’t like to box. He doesn't care about MMA. He simply likes to fight, full stop. It’s in his blood.
It’s just a few minutes after the final press conference for Nate Diaz’s professional boxing debut against YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul and Diaz’s team has arrived back at their hotel. The lobby is full of friends, training partners and family from Diaz’s hometown of Stockton, California who are in town for the fight.
Stockton is the hard-knock city east of San Francisco where The Diaz Brothers — Nate and older brother Nick — call home and made the area code ‘209’ famous.
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In Stockton, California they don’t play fight. It's less an action more a way of life and what just transpired minutes earlier could have been a lot worse.
Nate Diaz and Jake Paul brawl
Team Diaz is deep and as they exit their vehicles, they are all smiles following a contentious press conference. They aren’t particularly happy, per se, but more smiling in disbelief at the prospect that a brawl nearly broke out on stage when one of Jake Paul’s bodyguards tried to rush Team Diaz.
What could have ended up being a lot worse, fortunately, didn’t. For them, Jake Paul and his team don’t like to fight, but they do. And if a fight is to be had, they are going to bring the ruckus.
“We’ll see what’s up,” Team Diaz fighter Chris Avila — who fights Jeremy Stephens on the undercard — says to The Sporting News while seated on a couch in the lobby. “It’s not a real fight and that’s what sucks but he can still get the job done in a boxing match. Jake Paul is just doing his part promoting himself and the fight and Nate is just being real. S— like that is going to happen when both of those worlds collide."
Diaz pops in and out of view, unbothered by what just happened. He’s not doing any interviews because he’s grown weary of cameras being shoved in his face in an effort to try and get him to say something controversial. He’s over it. He’s over the shenanigans and prank calls. The insults and constant needling at him in and effort to sell pay-per-views. He just wants to fight. Not Saturday, right now.
Nate Diaz likes to fight. He doesn’t like to promote fights or talk about fighting, he just likes to fight because, to him, fighting is real and everything else is not.
It’s the reason why he’s become a cult hero in combat sports despite never having won a major world title and holding a decent — but certainly not spectacular — MMA record of 21-13 over the course of his nearly two-decade-long career. People don’t love him because he’s a winner, they love him because he simply wants to fight. Sometimes he comes up short, sometimes he doesn’t. He’s not here to entertain you with his pre-fight trash talk and then tell his opponent that it was just to sell a fight. Nate Diaz couldn’t care any less about getting people interested in him trying to punch and kick someone else out of consciousness. It’s the art of fighting that he loves.
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Calling fighting an art may actually annoy Nate Diaz but it is what it is.
Nate Diaz vs. Jake Paul: The fighter vs. the promoter
Jake Paul represents just about everything that Diaz despises and is his antithesis. Paul loves to ham it up for the camera and promote what he’s doing. He’s managed to be just good enough as a boxer to make his fights valuable. But to Diaz, he’s not a fighter, he’s an annoying promoter masquerading as a fighter who would get beat up by Diaz in anything other than boxing. But, alas, this boxing match is on Paul’s terms.
Diaz is a massive underdog against Paul, who is a dozen years his junior and naturally bigger and stronger. On the surface, this fight shouldn’t be much of a big deal. Diaz isn’t expected to be the toughest challenge Paul has faced as a boxer, but none of that matters to his fans.
They like him for one reason and one reason only.
Nate Diaz likes to fight.
At Thursday’s final press conference, Diaz listened to his opponent once again try to agitate him with insults. Paul continued to poke the bear by questioning his intelligence and suggesting that he will “kill” him inside the ring. Many of Paul’s barbs didn’t do so much as faze Diaz but one seemed to briefly draw his ire.
“He’s a bully,” Paul reiterated from his comments from the previous day. “He throws water bottles at innocent people, chokes them out in the streets, talks a lot of sh-t and I’m going to bully the bully…this is a guy that you love over here? He’s going to be dead on Saturday night. I’m going to finish his career.”
That got a response.
“Bully,” Diaz called Paul.
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Nate Diaz vs. Connor McGregor foreshadows Jake Paul fight
Diaz has a history of not being the one who starts fights, he finishes them. Ask Conor McGregor, who found out the hard way that talking trash to Diaz won’t get you far. While in the UFC, Diaz called out the Irishman after winning a unanimous decision over Michael Johnson in 2015.
“Conor McGregor, you’re taking everything I work for mother—er,” Diaz barked into the microphone. “I’m going to fight your mother——ing ass. You know what the real fight and what the real money fight is. Me! Not these clowns that you already punked at the press conference. Don’t nobody want to see that. You beat them already, that’s the easy fight.”
McGregor had a history of mentally defeating his opponents with his trash talk before the fight started. To Diaz, McGregor was the bully. But when Diaz ended up stepping up to face him on short notice at UFC 196, all the trash talk from McGregor in the world couldn’t prepare him for what Diaz called “a real fight.” Despite being a significant favorite, McGregor got beaten up and submitted in the second round by the no-nonsense Diaz. The victory launched Diaz from cult hero to mainstream icon and he kept it simple in his post-fight interview.
“I’m not surprised, mother——ers,” Diaz infamously said.
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Nate Diaz vs. Jake Paul press conference
Seven and a half years later he finds himself in a similar scenario with Paul. Like McGregor, Paul is trying to get under his skin with words. He even had an employee on the online sportsbook Betr pose as a media member and do his best to ruffle Diaz’s feathers. At the initial press conference, the employee challenged Diaz’s older brother Nate to a fight. At this press conference, he said he couldn’t wait for Paul to knock him out.
Diaz was fed up.
“It’s crazy when he talks a bunch of s—, too,” Diaz responded. "I’m like, we’re just participating in a boxing match. It’s a limited form of fighting, so I’m like, there’s no need to get disrespectful and talk a bunch of s—. I’m a competitor here. He's a little f——, and that’s what I’m dealing with and that’s what I’m going to deal with, and whatever comes when I sign up for this from the start, full-blown war, I’m good with it.”
Nate Diaz just likes to fight. And everything that transpired on that stage began to move from a boxing match to an actual fight. Paul’s team may not know it, but they woke up the side of Diaz that isn’t interested in winning a boxing match. If its a fight Paul wants, that's exactly what he's going to get.
For what it's worth, Diaz doesn’t consider boxing a “real fight.” Read between the lines of what he said: “Participating in a boxing match.” Diaz believes that a real fight doesn’t have any rules. It’s what he’s used to growing up in the streets of Stockton, California where a fight can bubble to the surface at any given moment. Historically, the city with the famous 209 area code has dealt with a high violent crime rate — a 2023 study found Stockton among the 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S. — and Diaz, his older brother, sister and mother lived in the heart of it. Diaz doesn’t go looking for fights but if you threaten him, all bets are off.
For Diaz, there’s a distinct difference between a competition and a fight. He believes that most people in the fight game treat it more like a game and less like a fight. For the 38-year-old, fights don’t have restrictions like three-minute rounds or wearing eight-ounce gloves. But a fight is a fight to Nate Diaz. He just wishes others, like Jake Paul, would treat it that way.
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And that’s why people love Nate Diaz. He’s not interested in your compliments or criticism. He’ll fight you whether there are thousands of people watching in an arena or in an empty room. It’s just what he does. The rules often end up getting in the way. He doesn’t lose fights, he loses competitions. And he’s okay with that.
Paul tried to criticize Diaz’s MMA record but couldn’t get a response. “The Problem Child” has done everything possible to draw interest in this fight and if he could bait Diaz into a war of words, he figures that will increase public interest. For the most part, Diaz hasn’t taken the bait. As a matter of fact, he ended up walking off the set of DAZN’s “Face 2 Face” sit down at what seemed like an awkward time.
In the midst of Jake Paul complimenting Diaz to moderator Ariel Helwani, Diaz decided that it would be a good time to get up and leave. He wasn’t interested in hearing someone singing his praises minutes after calling him stupid. It felt fake and Diaz didn’t like that. If you’re going to fight, fight. All the fair-weather nonsense surrounding the fight bores him.
Diaz has often been categorized as difficult to deal with by media but most simply don’t understand how he operates. He’s not here to give you a salacious quote to sell a fight. He just says whatever it is that he feels and if he doesn’t feel like saying anything, he’d rather just not show up. And if that leads to nobody buying the fights he’s in, so be it.
Thursday’s press conference was no different. When the Betr employee attempted to walk up to the stage, Diaz’s attitude shifted. To him, that was a threat and Diaz and his crew who showed up in droves to the press conference in SUVs and a tour bus don’t take kindly to threats. An act of aggression will be met accordingly. It may not be Diaz that the employee has to worry about, but it’s everyone who comes from Diaz’s hometown who walks, talks and think like him. Unlike Diaz, they have nothing to lose.
“What are you going to walk around the streets or some s—? You know my homeboys see you right now,” Diaz said the first time the employee — known as “Derek” — barked up the wrong tree. “That was pretty stupid.”
When Derek tried it again on Thursday, Diaz didn’t find it cute at all.
“That’s what I’m saying about he keeps calling me the bad guy and the bully and s—? He’s a bully. He’s the one that said they started the term influencer, right?” Diaz incredulously asked in reference to Derek’s attempt to draw his ire. "You’re influencing people to do anything for clout, like that s—. You’re out here just acting out. If I’m sitting in the room with him the other day, he’s just chilling. Get up here, and he’s going to act out. That’s a bad influence.”
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Diaz then proceeded to berate Paul’s security guard for a previous incident. Paul’s security guard later tried to get to Diaz during the face-off and a brief altercation started between the two camps. There was pushing, shoving and a few punches thrown. Diaz dismissed the altercation on the DAZN broadcast.
"Whatever happens, happens,” Diaz said. “But it usually could go better or worse, so it’s all good.”
Back at Diaz’s hotel, his team is filtering in and out of the lobby as Diaz blends in with his team. If you close your eyes and listen long enough, Diaz distinctive way of talking fades away because everybody from Stockton sounds like Nate Diaz. He’s at home in this element.
Diaz emerges. No cameras are on him. Whatever happened a few minutes ago is ancient history. He pauses to briefly address what happened. He’s not worried about himself, he’s worried about what could happen if Paul’s team doesn’t realize that poking the bear could result in the bear’s family coming to protect their territory.
It’s not a game to them. Never has been, never will be.
Diaz sits down and jokes with a few people. Nobody pulls their camera out because it’s not that type of party. If a camera would have appeared, Nate Diaz would certainly have left the area. But the only thing that he says on record is simple:
“I don’t want to wait until Saturday because I want to punch (Jake Paul) in the face tonight.”
Diaz takes a few sips of water and disappears into a van for a trip to Whole Foods. He’s got a boxing match to prepare for. He wishes it wasn't a boxing match and would prefer it to be a fight and the reason is simple.
Nate Diaz just likes to fight.
Maybe that’s wrong.
Nate Diaz just knows how to fight. It's the one real thing that is real. Everything else is fake.
And that’s why everyone loves him.