And now Gracie is taking his turn, this time talking to Sherdog's "Rewind" show:
"What happened," said Gracie, Diaz's longtime coach and manager, "is you can't pull a guy off a card and then bring him back on: ‘Oh, he's not good enough to fight. We pulled him out of the card. He can't be in the main event. Yeah, here you go. Oh, wait a minute, guess what happened? Our little star guy over here, his knee hurts. Oh my God, we need Nick Diaz. Let's put him back in the main event.' Everybody wants to see that fight. He delivers. Well, little star guy didn't fight and Nick Diaz did, but they pulled a lot of money from Nick's purse because it wasn't structured for him to make as much if it wasn't GSP, even though he was the main event now and put the people in the seats."
Personally, I'll always be conflicted on Diaz. In a perfect world every card would feature a Nick Diaz fight. But the constant whining and lack of he and his team owning up to their own behavior and it's repercussions is frustrating.
Diaz threw around Floyd Mayweather Jr. making $25 million for his last fight but Floyd is also undisputed as one of the two best in his sport and that fight sold close to a million more pay-per-view buys than 137 will. And Diaz was clearly rewarded for "saving the show" by the UFC going back on their word that Carlos Condit would get the title shot against Georges St. Pierre ("little star guy") and giving it to Diaz instead.
Seems fair enough to me.
SBN coverage of UFC 137 Results: Penn vs. Diaz