Dustin Poirier and Nate Diaz were supposed to clash in the co-main event of UFC 230, but Poirier suffered an injury and the bout got canned.
The lightweight contender claims that Diaz was a hard person for the UFC to negotiate with as the now canceled bout came together.
“We don’t even have enough time to talk about all the times it was changed,” Poirier said on The MMA Hour. “The fight was on, it was off, it was just crazy, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on. They wanted to switch it to five rounds, man, it was just so messed up dude. Nate was being hard to deal with, I believe. Every weight class they offered it at 155 and he wanted 160 and I agreed to that. He kind of negotiated himself out of a main-event spot. They offered us the main event, I accepted, Nate over-negotiated, they lost the main event, it was just back-to-back days of him trying to have his way, honestly.”
It is unknown if the fight between Poirier and Diaz will get rescheduled or if the two fighters will simply go their own way.
Poirier says he received a lot of backlash after things went haywire with the fight, but states that those same people don’t understand what was going on behind the scenes.
“A lot of these fans are blowing me up on social media saying you blew an opportunity, your big payday and stuff like that, they don’t understand how contracts work,” Poirier said. “I don’t get PPV points to fight Nate Diaz. I don’t know what anyone thinks is going on here, but, I took this fight not because it was a big-money fight, but because it was a big opportunity. It’s a huge headache with all the stuff that he was playing.”
UFC 230 takes place on Saturday, November 3 from Madison Square Garden in New York, New York with Daniel Cormier and Derrick Lewis headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
