#1 Conor McGregor vs Nate Diaz 1 and 2
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‘The Notorious’ Conor McGregor (21-3) is a former UFC Featherweight champion and current UFC Lightweight champion. On the other hand, Nate Diaz (19-11) is the TUF (The Ultimate Fighter) Season 5 winner.
Both rely on their trash-talking abilities to throw their opponents off their game, as well as have classic bully personas. They fought each other twice, with the first matchup taking place at UFC 196 in March of 2016 and the rematch taking place in August of the same year.
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The first fight saw Nate step in as a short-notice replacement for the injured then-champion Rafael Dos Anjos. With Diaz having only 11 days notice, the fight took place at Welterweight and saw Nate outbox an overconfident McGregor, rocking him and making him shoot a panic-takedown.
Nate reversed him easily and took his back, applying a Rear-Naked choke and securing the submission victory.
After a few months of back-and-forth negotiations with all kinds of drama from the UFC, McGregor and Diaz; a rematch was finally agreed upon for UFC 200, but later postponed to UFC 202. McGregor spent over $300,000 in training camp in order to prepare himself for his UFC 202 rematch against the Stockton native.
By then, the tables had turned and Nate was all over the MMA and mainstream media, even making an appearance on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on National Television. With the Diaz bros already being well-known for their bully mentality and devil-may-care attitude, Nate’s win over the ‘Notorious’ Irishman served to provide a boost to their already inflated egos.
August came and so did Diaz-McGregor 2. The rematch saw McGregor take a smart approach against Nate, tagging him with a constant bevy of leg kicks and mixing it up with left crosses, dropping Diaz 3 times in the opening stanza.
Although Diaz made a late surge, Conor was already ahead on points and had the fight in his kitty. McGregor beat Diaz by Majority Decision.
The aforementioned pair of fights is ironic, in the sense that, the man who entered each fight with all the momentum, ended up losing. And the bright side of the Diaz-McGregor fights is that the MMA community got to witness two extremely entertaining matchups between excellent strikers.
Besides, who doesn’t like watching two bullies beat the living hell out of one another? The bottom-line is that Conor and Nate deserve each other.
Our list is in no way meant to demean the aforementioned martial artists but to merely point out the fact that a true martial artist is not a ‘bully’. Some of the fighters that made this list exhibited some less-than-stellar behaviour. Keep up with our combat tradition and write in to me about fighters that you think could’ve made the list.
Keep training and remember ‘Bullies’ are cowards. Don’t be a coward. Don’t be a bully.
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