Melendez: ‘I brought in Nate Diaz and his 10 homies to intimidate Pettis on TUF set’

“I don’t even know why he keeps bringing Nate up. He had six weeks to say something to Nate too, and he didn’t, so I don’t know what he was talking about. It’s like when a girl is all ‘she didn’t say hi to me.’ Well, did you say hi to her? That’s just garbage.”

“I had Nate Diaz on the show and the intimidation factor is there. Heavyweights are afraid of Nate Diaz. They’re like ‘oh s—,’ you know what I mean? I brought Nate out there for that. I brought Nate out, he brought 10 dudes. … Even though the contract said you should only bring four people. He had 10 people, I was like, ‘ahh, I didn’t get the memo.’ But those things tend to happen on his side.”

“Nate was there. He was there for me. He was there to back me up. That’s how Nate is. He didn’t want to be on a TV show for six weeks, it is something he wouldn’t do for many people. He really stuck to it and he backed me up the whole time. And yeah, he’s not fake at all. He doesn’t like Pettis, they were there, he didn’t say nothing. He just mugged, that’s his culture. He didn’t talk s—, he wasn’t looking to do that on my show. He’s not trying to mess it up, he’s there to help. Nate is a really good friend of mine and a really good dude, and really stepped up.”

“There was tension. There was, let’s not fake it and try to be friends, but let’s also not fake it and talk s–, because that’s not what I do. I do my talking in the cage. There was tension there, but I respect him. We’d say ‘sup’ and go our separate ways in the hall. There were a couple days where we had to do photo shoots and we were right there mugging each other, and it was a little awkward. We did a whole photo session mad dogging each other and not saying one word to each other.”

Nate Diaz’s intimidating gangster swag landed him right in between Anthony Pettis and Gilbert Melendez and it was all pre-planned, according to the UFC title challenger’s statements to the media (via MMAFighting.com’s Dave Doyle)

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