Nick Diaz: ‘I Promise to do my best for the 209’

“I’d rather not be portrayed as an evil villain. But if people want to make me out to be that, and it sells tickets, that’s fine. But I do hope people understand that this is just what sells, and not what’s really me. I’m just a mixed-martial artist from Stockton, California. And I’m still here.”

“Stockton is where I’m from, and there’s no shame in it. But there’s not a lot of people pulling for Stockton except for people who are from here.”

“I didn’t have much good in my life. I really didn’t have anything. The minute I had something that I could hold on to, that I could invest in, that I could excel in, it became my life.”

“I felt like I was meant to do this, but nobody had any faith in me. My family, best friends were telling me: ‘If you think you’re going to make a living fighting, then you’re going to have a wake-up call coming soon.’”

“I know I had a bad mouth on me. I would say crazy stuff like that because I didn’t know any better I started fighting when I was 17 years old. I didn’t have some sort of spoon-fed team teaching me how to do this. I was just a kid and didn’t have somebody to show me how to dress, how to act, to be polite. I was just rough and figured it out for myself. But then you get older and better understand how the world works.”

“I don’t fight because I’m fanatical about fighting. I’m not out there to win a belt. I’m not out there to be the baddest dude in the world, although it started off that way. But you don’t make it this far if you have a whole lot of quit in you.”

“You know, I’ve never been the first person to step out of line, start playing games or misunderstand something. Right now, my opponent is not playing games with me, and I’m not playing games with him. But until they say, ‘Go,’ in the cage, you never know where it will go from there.”

“You come to me to fight a real fight.”

“We’re built a lot alike, but he has the size and reach. He has more of an advantage with kickboxing. I have more of an advantage with boxing. We’re both black belts in Jiu-Jitsu. So I’m not in the dark about what I’m getting myself into and what’s at stake. I know I can have a really good night, and that I might have a really bad night.”

“You go after anybody’s leg if it’s there. I’ve heard people say stuff like he has a weak leg. But I’m not taking too much of that into consideration. I just promise to do my best for myself, my family, my team and my city.”

The prolific Nick Diaz revealed a lot about himself in this new interview with UFC.COM‘s Mark Emmons.

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