Gregory Payan/Associated Press
An MMA return for Nate Diaz is in the works.
On Wednesday, UFC President Dana White told Oscar Willis of The Mac Existence his plans for the 35-yr-former, who final fought at welterweight and took off 2020 from competing.
“We’re working on a Nate Diaz wrestle appropriate now,” White acknowledged. “Or no longer it’s no longer Tony [Ferguson] nonetheless if we ranking it executed, I believe you’re gonna admire it. Lightweight. It would build him in a truly engaging role if he won the wrestle, and the man who he could per chance doubtlessly be struggling with, I believe or no longer it is a vast wrestle for him too.”
There has lengthy been speculation about a matchup between Diaz and Ferguson, nonetheless the pair hasn’t made it into the ring.
Diaz, 20-12, hasn’t fought as a gentle-weight since December 2015. He final entered the Octagon in 2019, when he misplaced by TKO to Jorge Masvidal at UFC 244.
His space for that tournament turned into as soon as in request when he examined obvious for a banned substance, nonetheless the USADA in the raze cleared him to wrestle. It turned into as soon as printed that Diaz had ingested a devoted supplement that contained traces of Ligandrol, a banned substance that “stimulates muscle convey,” per ESPN’s Brett Okamoto and Marc Raimondi.
Nevertheless, the UFC acknowledged in a explain: “There is unequivocally no appreciable performance bettering or therapeutic help from the greatly restricted amount of LGD-4033 that shall be most recent in his system, which is roughly 10,000 occasions decrease than one LGD-4033 therapeutic dose.”
Sooner than the loss to Masvidal, which came by process of doctor’s stoppage, Diaz defeated Anthony Pettis at UFC 241 in 2019.
