Khamzat Chimaev down for Nick Diaz fight: ‘We’ll see who is real gangster’

It’s been years since Nick Diaz has fought in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and up until last weekend, it seemed like it’d be years until we might see the elder Diaz brother again. But all that changed on Saturday night (April 24, 2021) at UFC 261. Nick was in attendance at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Fla., and after the event Dana White revealed they were going to have a serious talk about a comeback fight.

“Nick wants to fight,” White said at the post-fight press conference (listen to it here). “We’ll see how this goes. He’s waiting for me in the back right now. I’m going to go talk to him.”

Previous to this, White’s responses to Nick Diaz comeback talk has been less than supportive. But Nick may fit into the UFC president’s plans a little bit better now that the promotion needs a big name to fight its up-and-coming star Khamzat Chimaev. When asked if Diaz and Chimaev was a fight that could go down, White simply answered, “Yes.”

You don’t even have to ask Chimaev, he always says yes. But in case you were wondering what he thought of the match up ...

“I want to fight with him,” Chimaev said in an interview with MMA Junkie. “That will be good. I watched his fight when I was a kid, now I’m going to fight with him. Perfect for me. I like it. I want to see who is the real gangster. I think he is a real gangster in this sport, but we’ll see.”

“This is MMA, this is sport. Who is the gangster here? Gangster is other things. People kill each other. Maybe in this game, he is a gangster. You can say like that. I grow up in the war, brother. This is bulls--t for me, somebody’s a gangster. No, I’ve seen many things in my life. For me, nobody is gangster.”

Khamzat’s return date hasn’t changed: he’s still looking for an August return now that he’s recovered from lingering side effects of COVID-19 (details).

“I’m coming back, and we kill somebody, smash somebody,” he said. “Now we have Diaz. I don’t know, both maybe someday? Both brothers. We’re going to see who is the real gangster. Chechen gangster is better than Stockton gangster.”

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