Nate Diaz says fans won’t see any manufactured bad blood when he meets Mike Perry at MVP MMA 1 on Saturday at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif., in a bout that will stream on Netflix.
Both Diaz and Perry are former UFC fighters, but Diaz made it clear he’s not interested in copying the kind of pre-fight trash talk he believes other fighters have used to sell fights.
Responding to talk about Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland’s recent lead-up, Diaz said, "Yeah, they were faking the funk," and later added, "I saw highlights of (Chimaev and Strickland) hugging and f*cking shaking hands right off the bat, and the whole time, it's f*cking like you bullsh*tted me."
Diaz instead offered respect for Perry’s resume outside the UFC, saying, "I got a fight with this dude, he's most violent motherf*cker. He knocked out f*cking middleweight (Luke) Rockhold, and f*cking (Jeremy) Stephens, and beat a lot of good people, doing boss sh*t on the outside (of the UFC)."
He emphasized he won’t pretend to hate Perry just to hype the matchup. "I was already OK with him. We're not f*cking friends or anything like that, but I'm not gonna f*cking play around and make no fake, artificial beef with you," Diaz said. "I came here to fight, train hard, win and f*ck your sh*t up, just like I know you're planning on f*cking my sh*t up – and I'm not gonna put no artificial beef out there, OK?"
