UFC 158 is less than one month away, as Georges St. Pierre fights Nick Diaz for GSP's welterweight title. This is the 3rd time they've set this fight up, and Diaz already lost one title shot for no-showing press conference. Diaz has played nice as far as the press conferences, but now the issue has apparently shifted to the Countdown series. MMA Weekly transcribed what he had to say about Nick at the UFC on Fuel post-event media scrum:
"First we gotta get him to show up for the (expletive) interviews and then we can do it. How many has he missed, four? Three. He’s missed three," White revealed.
"So we’ve got a crew rolling around Stockton not doing a (expletive) thing. It costs us a lot of money and we can’t properly sell the fight or Nick Diaz."
MMA Weekly also spoke to Jonathan Tweedale, a lawyer for Diaz's camp, and he denied that Diaz had any knowledge of the scheduled interviews, and that the UFC never even notified him of these dates:
"Dana is mistaken. There is no ‘crew rolling around Stockton’ and Nick did not ‘miss’ three interviews," Jonathan Tweedale, a lawyer with the Nick Diaz camp, told MMAWeekly.com on Sunday.
"In fact, several earlier dates were arranged without Nick’s knowledge and with no notice to Nick. When Nick learned what had happened, I assisted him in arranging a date and time directly (Thursday, Feb. 14). Nick arrived early and was in good spirits at that Feb. 14 date – the one and only date he knew about in advance.
"Nick requires things to be done in an organized and orderly manner. That is the kind of professional he is."
If you wanted a smooth-sailing fight build-up for GSP vs. Diaz, you're not going to get it. Dana White did say he was "not worried" about these incidents, but the question remains whether or not this will escalate into something worse than missing Countdown filming.'
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