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Ariel Helwani believes Nate Diaz is desperate to complete the last fight of his contract and move on from the UFC. According to Helwani, the Stockton native will even accept a bout against the lethal Khamzat Chimaev just to exhaust his UFC contract.
While Dana White claims that the UFC must contractually offer three bouts to a fighter every year, Helwani believes they can keep offering the same opponent if a fighter chooses to decline the proposed matchup. The 29-year old recently said in an episode of On the Nose on MMA Fighting:
"I believe they can keep offering it [a previously declined matchup]. But again, there's no real rhyme or reason to any of this. They can get rid of that thing, they can waive it, the same way they can cut you after one loss and after you've signed a four-fight deal or a six-fight deal. And by the way, if they offered him [Nate Diaz] Khamzat right now, I think he would take it. That's how badly he wants to move on."
Watch the latest episode of On the Nose below:
Dana White on the potential matchup between Nate Diaz and Khamzat Chimaev
Dana White was revealing potential matchups on The Pivot podcast when a matchmaking board in the background showed a fight between Nate Diaz and Khamzat Chimaev as the co-main event of UFC 276. True to his nature, 'Borz' expressed interest in the fight immediately after the leak. However, the bout was missing from the recently revealed UFC 276 card scheduled for July.
UFC president Dana White weighed in on the matchmaking leak of a potential bout between Diaz and Chimaev. According to White, some of the matchups on the board merely serve as 'placeholders' and aren't done deals. The 52-year old said during the UFC 274 post-fight presser:
“Yeah, some of those [fights that were on the board] are just placeholders. So when we go in there, we’ll have placeholders in place. None of that stuff are done deals. Some of those are just placeholders. Some of them are done, and some of them aren’t.”
While White confessed that the UFC was interested in the matchup, he said he didn't know if Diaz had been offered the fight already.
Watch White's appearance at the UFC 274 post-fight media scrum below:
