Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz Are Fighting Over the Biggest Detail of Their Next Fight

It’s a weighty issue.

Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz will fight again. The UFC wants it, the fans want it and the fighters want it. All that’s left are details. But in this case, the details are a bitch. 

The biggest sticking point  is the weight class at which the rematch will take place. It’s a topic that Diaz has taken a particular interest in after the first fight took place at 170 pounds. 

That’s 15 pounds more than the 155 at which he typically fights and 25 pounds more than what McGregor is used to, providing what Diaz saw as a built in excuse for his opponent. 

“If there’s a second fight, I’ll fight at [155]. I’d like to be in shape, be cut up and not have to hear…excuses,” he recently told Fox.

Diaz thinks that McGregor has gotten too much rope for his jump up to 170. “When he lost the fight, he’s getting all this credit for going up two weight classes,” he said. “But I’m really only one weight class above him. I’m a lightweight.” 

The reason Diaz agreed to fighting the first fight at 170 is because he was on vacation when he got the call from the UFC. He has said that he was prepared to get down to 155 but was told he didn’t have to. With time for a full training camp though, he wants to enter the rematch, rumored to be on the books for UFC 200 in July, at his fighting weight. 

McGregor, meanwhile, wants to stay at 170. Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com says that’s because McGregor is “obsessed with the idea that he lost to Nate Diaz at 170 pounds, he feels like he should have won and he wants the same circumstances, the same rules, the same stipulations.”

In the end, Diaz has suggested, he’ll go along with whatever conditions are put in front of him. His primary concern is fighting the biggest fight available and getting the biggest pay days. “The best guys in the world make the most money,” he said on Fox. 

“That might piss a lot of people off, but money talks.”