UFC welterweight Nate Diaz fired shots at UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones following the latter's recent comments about the best pound-for-pound fighters debate sparked off by the now-famous GOAT thread that Conor McGregor started on Twitter.
McGregor put up a list of the greatest fighters of all time where he gave Anderson Silva the top spot and placed himself at #2, ahead of the likes of Jon Jones and Georges St. Pierre. The list kicked up a storm on social media and now most of the big names in the UFC have joined in on the GOAT conversation.
Nate Diaz and Jon Jones engage in a verbal back and forth
Upon seeing Conor McGregor's tweet, Diaz said that he is the real goat because he made the Irishman submit in the second round of their welterweight clash at UFC 196. Diaz's tweet caught Jon Jones' attention and in return, Jones took a dig at the Stockton native by saying that the GOAT argument has become ridiculous now. Jones' comment didn't go down well with Diaz who took to Twitter to take some sharp digs at "Bones", referring to his infamous PED related scandals.
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The verbal back and forth between Diaz and Jones is a bolt from the blue but we know how strongly Diaz opposes the use of performance-enhancing drugs and steroids by professional fighters and Jones has landed into trouble several times for having traces of banned substances in his bloodstream. However, no matter how much the pair brawls on social media, their rivalry will not culminate into a fight anytime soon because Diaz is a welterweight and much smaller in size compared to Jones who is a light-heavyweight considering a move up to heavyweight.
Both Diaz and Jones have one man to blame for the whole fiasco and that's Conor McGregor who made waves on Twitter by putting up his GOAT list where he is ranked higher than the likes of GSP and Jon Jones who've both had more than 10 successful title defenses whereas the Irishman never defended his belt. However, one can't deny the fact that McGregor knows how to grab the spotlight even when there's not much going on. One thread on Twitter is all it took for him to get the whole MMA community talking.