Nate Diaz: UFC ‘conned me’ with eight-fight contract, ‘tried to do me dirty’

Loggerheads!

One-time Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) No. 1 Lightweight title contender, Nate Diaz, and company president, Dana White, are still not seeing eye-to-eye.

In short: Diaz feels he is worth more money, while White wants him to prove it inside the Octagon. In fact, Diaz recently requested to be released from his current contract via Twitter.com, but White denied the "nutty" request because he just signed a contract with which he was allegedly "happy."

Clearly, that is not the case. And Diaz finally opened up (via MMAFighting.com) about his contempt:

"They need to be about more money. My contract is all fucked up. I want to be paid like these other fighters. I'm over here getting chump change. At this point, they're paying all my partners and other people I train with are getting real money, and it's too embarrassing for me to even fight again for the money they're paying me. So they can either pay me or let me go. I'm with that.... I don't get paid sh*t, and I'm about to tell the world. I didn't like what my brother and my partners got paid. Now that they got a better contract, which still ain't shit, it blows what I get out of the water. And they deserve triple what they get. I've been in the UFC for eight years and never turned down a fight.... My partners still make shit money for what the company is bringing in. They're happy because they're not getting paid what they used to get paid, so they get little chunks to shut up. As far as I'm concerned, I don't get paid shit. I get $60,000 (to show) and $60,000 (to win).... When I signed my last contract, they conned me into signing an eight-fight contract to fight [Benson] Henderson. I was negotiating my contract three weeks out from the fight. [My manager] Mike [Kogan] came in and got me a little bit of a raise -- a little -- they act like they hooked me up. They didn't do shit. They gave me a little something to shut me up for a minute.... If I can get released, I can go fight somewhere and make some money. If they can renegotiate, I can make some money, because right now I'm broke."

To read the full rant - and it's much longer than the excerpt above - head over to MMAFighting.com.

It's seems hard to argue that The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 5 winner isn't worth more than his $60,000 / $60,000 deal. Diaz holds the No. 2 spot all-time with five "Submission of the Night" awards, five "Fight of the Night" bonuses and one "Knockout of the Night" highlight to his credit.

The 28-year-old has competed 19 times inside the Octagon since 2007, winning 12 of those contests in the 155- and 170-pound divisions.

But, aside from a first round finish of Gray Maynard at TUF 18 Finale back in Nov. 2013 -- a date that conflicted with his high school reunion -- what has Diaz done for White and Co. lately? Apparently not much, according to comments in response from the head honcho.

His words:

"We gave him a shot at the title and he lost to Ben Henderson. If he would have won, obviously his deal would have changed if he became champion, which he did not. Then he got stopped by Thomson. Thomson finished him. Now he comes off a win over Gray Maynard and feels like he should be making Justin Bieber money. Nate needs to get back in there and start fighting, win fights again and earn a title shot again.... I've always been good to Diaz. This is the kind of craziness you see with athletes. They end up spinning off and don't make the money they should have made. Nate Diaz has what it takes to be champion or he doesn't, but I'll tell you, there's only one way to find out. He has to come back and fight. He thinks he loses to two of the best guys in the world and deserves more money? In what fucking planet does that make sense?"

No matter how it shakes out in the end, it could always be worse, even if Diaz would seemingly jump at the chance to trade places with his good friend and training partner, Jake Shields.