Opinion: Where is Nick Diaz? How Dare You Ask
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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company,
Evolve Media.
* * *
Two years ago when the
Ultimate Fighting Championship announced its partnership with
the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the stringent regulations and testing
the relationship would entail -- a then-minimum of 2750 or so tests
per year across the roster -- it was fair to say that the game had
changed. You're reading this; you've seen it with your own eyes.
You've seen fighters, from prince to pauper, champions to chattel,
test positive for performance enhancing drugs. You've seen athletes
still yet to fail a drug test undergo clearly observable, drastic
physical changes.
Nick Diaz isn't one of those guys.
From the moment the UFC announced that roster fighters would be forced to regularly file their whereabouts with USADA, it was unavoidable that, even beyond the realm of drug testing, this protocol was going to trip someone up. If you know the first thing about MMA fighters, or at least some of the misfits that will be inevitable present on a 500-plus-person roster, you knew that someone was going to get dinged for not checking in with Mom and Dad, though I'm not sure metaphorically which one is Dana White and which one is Jeff Novitzky in this case.
If you were a betting sort of person and wanted to put a few bucks on who would be the first UFC fighter to face a suspension for ghosting USADA on their whereabouts three times, even if he would've perhaps been minus dollars on the moneyline, you probably would've went with Nick Diaz. Nick Diaz isn't just “one of those guys,” he is that guy. And now, he is, for real.
On Thursday evening, the UFC issued a statement saying that Diaz was the first fighter to accrue three violations for not reporting his whereabouts to USADA. I can't imagine even a lukewarm MMA fan being remotely surprised by this, nor do I imagine that UFC brass had its collective jaw dropped. For posterity, here's the company's full statement:
The UFC organization has been notified that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has informed Nick Diaz of a potential Anti-Doping Policy violation stemming from Diaz’s alleged accumulation of three Whereabouts Failures within a 12-month period. Diaz, like all other UFC athletes, is enrolled in USADA’s UFC Registered Testing Pool and required to file accurate Whereabouts information in order to be located for out-of-competition, no-notice testing.
USADA, the independent administrator of the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, will handle the results management and appropriate adjudication of Diaz’s case, who has been provisionally suspended pending the final resolution of this matter. Under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, there is a full and fair legal process that is afforded to all athletes before any sanctions are imposed. Additional information will be provided at the appropriate time as the process moves forward.
While absolutely none of this is shocking given that we're talking about Nick Diaz, there's a few facts necessary to express. One, the whereabouts policy may be fairly unconscionable trash -- we'll get to this point in a second -- but it doesn't change the fact Diaz did this to himself. Yes, when the whereabouts plan was launched, there were issues, primarily with the app designed to allow fighters to log in from all over their world to pinpoint their current GPS location. When the app launched in September 2015, fighters like Max Holloway, Tim Kennedy and Rory MacDonald all complained about its lack of functionality. Those problems were seemingly rectified quickly and there's been no substantial complaint about the logistics of whereabouts reporting since. Diaz's issues are not a technological one, they're a personal one.
Secondly, there is still a bizarre tendency to see Diaz's professional failings as youthful indiscretions. When he was released from the UFC the first time in late 2005, the conversational die that Diaz was an exuberant prospect yet to reach his full potential was cast and has never been updated. That was nearly 12 years ago. Diaz turns 34 on Aug. 2. We're beyond the point of “youthful indiscretions” for Diaz; do you realize that Diaz has already had a 15-year MMA career? Let that sink in.
Both brothers, Nick and younger brother Nate Diaz, hate MMA's necessitated media obligations, but their actual personalities and tolerance for journalistic BS are distinct and different. Nate, especially in the wake of making that Conor McGregor twice, is largely indifferent and sees it mostly as a dog-and-pony show, while Nick has long had anxious, visceral reactions to even simple media engagements that suggest if not a personality disorder, then a complete inability to reconcile these responsibilities with personal life. Nick has, unquestionably, become better at these sorts of things over the years, but there's no denying he finds them loathsome and pointless to a degree that often he can't come to peace with and suffer through in a way his brother can.
Nick is unrepentant about his lack of professionalism. He doesn't care, he hates the politics and machinations of the sport and openly flaunts it via his cripplingly and self-sabotaging indifference to accepted standards and practices, i.e. show up to a damn press conference when you're told or just pick up your phone to do a conference call to promote a fight. The ongoing and amusing irony about Nick Diaz's career, however, is that unwitting or not, his brand of vulgar apathy has an uncanny way of exposing the sillinesses that encircle this sport.
Sure, Diaz is an easy and reflexive hero for a pro-weed crowd, but ultimately, his repeated run-ins with the Nevada Athletic Commission over the years served to highlight how truly archaic and stupid the standard adjudication of cannabis-related drug failures were. More than that, because Diaz refused to ever kiss the ring of the all-mighty NAC, the events following his “failed” drug test at UFC 183 with Anderson Silva laid bare what a kangaroo court America's most influential athletic commission was, especially the positively vindictive and insane conduct of ex-commissioner Pat Lundvall, a practicing lawyer who sought and effectively succeeded in denying Diaz his Fifth Amendment rights.
Unlike Silva, who won a 25-minute decision over Diaz at UFC 183 and then tested positive for two exogenous steroids and blamed it on a teammate's Thai sex juice, the NAC could never prove that Diaz actually tested positive for anything given the inconsistency of the three fight night tests that were administered. The NAC claimed Diaz, who allegedly tested positive for elevated cannabinoid metabolites -- obviously he smoked weed, that's not the point here -- could've slurped down tons of water to dilute his samples, despite the fact this is completely medical implausible. He was initially hit with a $165,000 fine and a completely preposterous five-year suspension before arbitrating.
It recalls the idiocy of when Diaz first tested positive in Nevada following his February 2007 win over Takanori Gomi, when Nevada commission Dr. Tony Alamo honestly opined that he thought Diaz was high during a fight where he smashed in a legend's face and then hit a gogoplata and it made him impervious to pain:
“Mr. Diaz was 175 [ng/mL]. This creates a unique situation. I was there at this fight and believe that you were intoxicated and that it made you numb to the pain. Did it help you win? I think it did,” said Alamo. Diaz is no conscientious, political warrior, but he has a truly awing ability to hold a mirror up the sheer stupidity of this sport, whether he means to or not. He is not just MMA's weed hero, he's its great regulatory martyr.
It's happening now once again. Yes, this whole situation is quite obviously Diaz's fault, a grown ass man in his mid-30's, that he failed to just use his phone three times in 12 months to tell USADA he was sitting in his house in Stockton, California, smoking weed and doing jiu-jitsu, which is absolutely not difficult. Nonetheless, Diaz hasn't fought since the Silva encounter, two and a half years ago. He may have a promotional contract, but UFC President Dana White just said he doesn't think Diaz will ever fight again. Keep this in mind for a moment.
What Diaz failed to do is not something he should've ever even been compelled to do in the first place. If his own promoter doesn't even think he's going to ever fight again and we're approaching three years he hasn't fought, what's the use of USADA actively testing him and keeping tabs on that? Moreover, given both the completely heinous handling of Brock Lesnar's “entry” into the USADA testing pool prior to his win over Mark Hunt at UFC 200 last July, as well as the UFC's present desperation for sellable main events, does anyone think Diaz wouldn't get preferential treatment at this point if he decided to return for a pay-per-view headliner? Hell, like Cortney Casey versus Texas, USADA could've actually saved Diaz from the NAC's tyranny, if only the Silva fight had happened six months later when the deal took effect.
Bigger than all that? I don't need to tell you UFC fighters are, supposedly and mythically, independent contractors. Please, anyone, tell me what contracting firm would ever make you constantly, on the whims of a third-party drug testing agency, make you electronically submit your GPS location? This is invasive and debatably inhumane for a legitimate, legal employer. For a fighter who allegedly has independent contractor status, as viciously espoused by the UFC? It's absurd.
Diaz is no marauding philosopher, keen and clever, pathologically driven to expose the hypocrisies and scams that catalyze MMA. He's just an antisocial, peculiar hard ass who loves getting high and has better things to do than tell Jeff Novitzky where he is. It may be totally incidental, thoroughly unpremeditated. Regardless, Diaz remains MMA's rogue hero; for whatever reason, his contempt for the the sport's governing structures and their expected niceties always manages to shine a light on what is broken and foul about where we're at in the fight game, whether he has a clue or not. Maybe it's all the better he doesn't, as he probably wouldn't care anyhow.
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Nick Diaz isn't one of those guys.
Alas, the drug testing itself is far from the only component of the
UFC-USADA relationship that forces another level of responsibility
on the promotion's athletes. No, coordinating the mass-scale,
routine examination of over approximately 550 fighters scattered
all over the planet requires certain mechanisms, a particular level
of rigor.
From the moment the UFC announced that roster fighters would be forced to regularly file their whereabouts with USADA, it was unavoidable that, even beyond the realm of drug testing, this protocol was going to trip someone up. If you know the first thing about MMA fighters, or at least some of the misfits that will be inevitable present on a 500-plus-person roster, you knew that someone was going to get dinged for not checking in with Mom and Dad, though I'm not sure metaphorically which one is Dana White and which one is Jeff Novitzky in this case.
If you were a betting sort of person and wanted to put a few bucks on who would be the first UFC fighter to face a suspension for ghosting USADA on their whereabouts three times, even if he would've perhaps been minus dollars on the moneyline, you probably would've went with Nick Diaz. Nick Diaz isn't just “one of those guys,” he is that guy. And now, he is, for real.
On Thursday evening, the UFC issued a statement saying that Diaz was the first fighter to accrue three violations for not reporting his whereabouts to USADA. I can't imagine even a lukewarm MMA fan being remotely surprised by this, nor do I imagine that UFC brass had its collective jaw dropped. For posterity, here's the company's full statement:
The UFC organization has been notified that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has informed Nick Diaz of a potential Anti-Doping Policy violation stemming from Diaz’s alleged accumulation of three Whereabouts Failures within a 12-month period. Diaz, like all other UFC athletes, is enrolled in USADA’s UFC Registered Testing Pool and required to file accurate Whereabouts information in order to be located for out-of-competition, no-notice testing.
USADA, the independent administrator of the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, will handle the results management and appropriate adjudication of Diaz’s case, who has been provisionally suspended pending the final resolution of this matter. Under the UFC Anti-Doping Policy, there is a full and fair legal process that is afforded to all athletes before any sanctions are imposed. Additional information will be provided at the appropriate time as the process moves forward.
While absolutely none of this is shocking given that we're talking about Nick Diaz, there's a few facts necessary to express. One, the whereabouts policy may be fairly unconscionable trash -- we'll get to this point in a second -- but it doesn't change the fact Diaz did this to himself. Yes, when the whereabouts plan was launched, there were issues, primarily with the app designed to allow fighters to log in from all over their world to pinpoint their current GPS location. When the app launched in September 2015, fighters like Max Holloway, Tim Kennedy and Rory MacDonald all complained about its lack of functionality. Those problems were seemingly rectified quickly and there's been no substantial complaint about the logistics of whereabouts reporting since. Diaz's issues are not a technological one, they're a personal one.
Secondly, there is still a bizarre tendency to see Diaz's professional failings as youthful indiscretions. When he was released from the UFC the first time in late 2005, the conversational die that Diaz was an exuberant prospect yet to reach his full potential was cast and has never been updated. That was nearly 12 years ago. Diaz turns 34 on Aug. 2. We're beyond the point of “youthful indiscretions” for Diaz; do you realize that Diaz has already had a 15-year MMA career? Let that sink in.
Both brothers, Nick and younger brother Nate Diaz, hate MMA's necessitated media obligations, but their actual personalities and tolerance for journalistic BS are distinct and different. Nate, especially in the wake of making that Conor McGregor twice, is largely indifferent and sees it mostly as a dog-and-pony show, while Nick has long had anxious, visceral reactions to even simple media engagements that suggest if not a personality disorder, then a complete inability to reconcile these responsibilities with personal life. Nick has, unquestionably, become better at these sorts of things over the years, but there's no denying he finds them loathsome and pointless to a degree that often he can't come to peace with and suffer through in a way his brother can.
Nick is unrepentant about his lack of professionalism. He doesn't care, he hates the politics and machinations of the sport and openly flaunts it via his cripplingly and self-sabotaging indifference to accepted standards and practices, i.e. show up to a damn press conference when you're told or just pick up your phone to do a conference call to promote a fight. The ongoing and amusing irony about Nick Diaz's career, however, is that unwitting or not, his brand of vulgar apathy has an uncanny way of exposing the sillinesses that encircle this sport.
Sure, Diaz is an easy and reflexive hero for a pro-weed crowd, but ultimately, his repeated run-ins with the Nevada Athletic Commission over the years served to highlight how truly archaic and stupid the standard adjudication of cannabis-related drug failures were. More than that, because Diaz refused to ever kiss the ring of the all-mighty NAC, the events following his “failed” drug test at UFC 183 with Anderson Silva laid bare what a kangaroo court America's most influential athletic commission was, especially the positively vindictive and insane conduct of ex-commissioner Pat Lundvall, a practicing lawyer who sought and effectively succeeded in denying Diaz his Fifth Amendment rights.
Unlike Silva, who won a 25-minute decision over Diaz at UFC 183 and then tested positive for two exogenous steroids and blamed it on a teammate's Thai sex juice, the NAC could never prove that Diaz actually tested positive for anything given the inconsistency of the three fight night tests that were administered. The NAC claimed Diaz, who allegedly tested positive for elevated cannabinoid metabolites -- obviously he smoked weed, that's not the point here -- could've slurped down tons of water to dilute his samples, despite the fact this is completely medical implausible. He was initially hit with a $165,000 fine and a completely preposterous five-year suspension before arbitrating.
It recalls the idiocy of when Diaz first tested positive in Nevada following his February 2007 win over Takanori Gomi, when Nevada commission Dr. Tony Alamo honestly opined that he thought Diaz was high during a fight where he smashed in a legend's face and then hit a gogoplata and it made him impervious to pain:
“Mr. Diaz was 175 [ng/mL]. This creates a unique situation. I was there at this fight and believe that you were intoxicated and that it made you numb to the pain. Did it help you win? I think it did,” said Alamo. Diaz is no conscientious, political warrior, but he has a truly awing ability to hold a mirror up the sheer stupidity of this sport, whether he means to or not. He is not just MMA's weed hero, he's its great regulatory martyr.
It's happening now once again. Yes, this whole situation is quite obviously Diaz's fault, a grown ass man in his mid-30's, that he failed to just use his phone three times in 12 months to tell USADA he was sitting in his house in Stockton, California, smoking weed and doing jiu-jitsu, which is absolutely not difficult. Nonetheless, Diaz hasn't fought since the Silva encounter, two and a half years ago. He may have a promotional contract, but UFC President Dana White just said he doesn't think Diaz will ever fight again. Keep this in mind for a moment.
What Diaz failed to do is not something he should've ever even been compelled to do in the first place. If his own promoter doesn't even think he's going to ever fight again and we're approaching three years he hasn't fought, what's the use of USADA actively testing him and keeping tabs on that? Moreover, given both the completely heinous handling of Brock Lesnar's “entry” into the USADA testing pool prior to his win over Mark Hunt at UFC 200 last July, as well as the UFC's present desperation for sellable main events, does anyone think Diaz wouldn't get preferential treatment at this point if he decided to return for a pay-per-view headliner? Hell, like Cortney Casey versus Texas, USADA could've actually saved Diaz from the NAC's tyranny, if only the Silva fight had happened six months later when the deal took effect.
Bigger than all that? I don't need to tell you UFC fighters are, supposedly and mythically, independent contractors. Please, anyone, tell me what contracting firm would ever make you constantly, on the whims of a third-party drug testing agency, make you electronically submit your GPS location? This is invasive and debatably inhumane for a legitimate, legal employer. For a fighter who allegedly has independent contractor status, as viciously espoused by the UFC? It's absurd.
Diaz is no marauding philosopher, keen and clever, pathologically driven to expose the hypocrisies and scams that catalyze MMA. He's just an antisocial, peculiar hard ass who loves getting high and has better things to do than tell Jeff Novitzky where he is. It may be totally incidental, thoroughly unpremeditated. Regardless, Diaz remains MMA's rogue hero; for whatever reason, his contempt for the the sport's governing structures and their expected niceties always manages to shine a light on what is broken and foul about where we're at in the fight game, whether he has a clue or not. Maybe it's all the better he doesn't, as he probably wouldn't care anyhow.
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