Nick Diaz hires law firm to challenge believed 'irregularities' in his UFC 183 drug test

With a hearing in front of Nevada Athletic Commission officials looming, UFC veteran and former Strikeforce champion Nick Diaz is retaining a law firm. Diaz was scheduled to appear at an NAC meeting earlier this week following another positive drug test for marijuana, but with a motion for continuance granted, Diaz has taken the additional time to hire a legal team to combat what he believes are "irregularities" in his test results. UFC Tonight's Ariel Helwani reported the news on Wednesday's episode.

The Seham, Seham, Meltz, and Petersen LLP firm is based in New York and they will be representing Diaz at his next hearing, which is expected to be in April, but the commission has not confirmed the date.

Diaz's troubles with passing drug tests in Nevada are well known. His gogoplata win over Takanori Gomi at PRIDE 33 was stricken from the record books in 2006 and he was suspended for 6 months. Following his loss to Carlos Condit at UFC 143, Diaz was banned for a year for his 2nd marijuana-related offense, and now despite the NAC raising its allowable threshold from 15 nanograms per milliliter to 150 ng/ml, Diaz's post-fight results showed that he doubled the new limit in his loss vs. Anderson Silva at UFC 183.

In 2012 (after the Condit loss), Diaz used attorney Ross Goodman, who (unsuccessfully) argued that the metabolites found in his sample didn't prove that he'd been using marijuana in-competition, as opposed to the penalty-free out-of-competition standards imposed by WADA.