John McCarthy claims Nick Diaz once landed 200 shots in a single round against Scott Smith

John McCarthy has claimed that Nick Diaz landed 200 shots in a single round against Scott Smith in their Strikeforce bout back in 2009.

McCarthy brought up the 2009 fight while speaking about Nick Diaz's return performance against Robbie Lawler at UFC 266. In a recent episode of his Weighing In podcast, the former UFC referee said:

"I did a fight of Nick's when he fought Scott Smith, no one's gonna remember it. But I believe in one round, he landed 200 and some shots. That was one round, one five-minute round he landed, not threw, but landed like 200 freaking shots. That's the kind of output Nick Diaz was famous for and he was trying to bring it back. He's just been gone too long and you could definitely see Nick was never a real fast guy, but he slowed down even more. The shots were just a little bit slower. Just a little bit."

Catch John McCarthy's assessment of Nick Diaz's UFC 266 performance on the Weighing In podcast below:

Nick Diaz defeated Robbie Lawler in their first encounter at UFC 47. After 17 years, the two veterans faced each other for the second time at UFC 266. Diaz showed glimpses of his old self inside the octagon. He even outstuck Lawler in the first two rounds of their bout.

However, 'Ruthless' was much more accurate with his striking and knocked down the Stockton native with a check hook in the third round. Lawler won via a TKO after Diaz chose not to return to his feet to continue the bout.

Evidently, Diaz isn't the same fighter he was six years ago. He clearly lacked the cardio that was required to fight at such a high pace.

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Did Nick Diaz really land 200 strikes in one round?

The claim made by John McCarthy that Nick Diaz landed 200 strikes in one round appears to be factually incorrect. As per the CompuStrike stats given in an MMA News article, Diaz threw 221 strikes in the second round of his bout against Smith. However, the Stockton star only landed 125 of them.

Smith, meanwhile, landed just five strikes on Diaz in that round. The former interim UFC welterweight title challenger went on to win the fight in the third round via a submission.