Nate Diaz proud of ethnic background & community work Conor McGregor mocked
Nate Diaz is known for mean-mugging and taking out opponents in the UFC Octagon, all while talking plenty of trash to them. He and his UFC 196 rival Conor McGregor certainly had some fun exchanges at their joint press conference last week, and we shouldn't be surprised if they have more to say to one another on Saturday in Las Vegas while they pound on one another.
Still, when it comes down to it, both men seem to admire one another. In fact, Diaz had lots of praise for McGregor -- even the Irishman's mouthiness.
"I think he's great at the whole thing -- calling out everybody, saying what he says," he told UFC Tonight.
"A lot of the stuff he says, I've already said or I've already thought to say (laughs). Then you're really mad. You're like, 'That's what I said!' (laughs) But, he got it out there, and he's doing a good job."
So there are no sour grapes from Diaz regarding the man who has called him out and who is trying to get inside his head right now. Still, both Diaz and McGregor said things that were offensive to not just one another, but to others, and specifically minority groups, last week during their presser.
In the process of trying to demean McGregor's accomplishments at lower weight classes, Diaz used the term "midgets" repeatedly and pejoratively. When McGregor tried to give Diaz back-handed compliments and talk down to him, he also used a word that isn't quite his to use, at least not in an insulting way, "cholo," to describe Diaz.
McGregor tried to paint a paradoxical picture of Diaz, somewhat admiringly, but mostly in an apparent attempt to make the hard-nosed fighter seem soft and mushy in public. "He's like a little cholo gangster from the hood, but at the same time he coaches kids jiu jitsu on a Sunday morning, and goes on bike rides with the elderly," McGregor said of Diaz.
"He makes gun signs with the right hand and animal balloons with the left hand. You're a credit to the community."
For those not familiar with Latino ethnic slurs and stereotypes, calling a Mexican-American from the inner-city like Diaz a "little cholo gangster from the hood," is a bit like a calling an African-American "a little homie gangster from the hood." Perhaps Diaz and his friends call themselves cholos, I don't know.
In any case, it certainly isn't a term a white European like McGregor can use with any class, especially when so clearly trying to use it to humiliate someone. During a rest from a workout this week in Las Vegas, Diaz struck another mature and earnest note in speaking out against McGregor's ethnic and culturual slurs.
"He was doing his thing at the press conference, and he was going to try and bust me out and call me a cholo. But, that's the background where I come from," Diaz said, calmly.
"It's hardcore where I live. If he would have came from where I come from, he wouldn't have made it, man. Nobody makes it out of where we come from and you don't know what I've been through."
Diaz, like his brother Nick, chose a life of discipline and dedication to martial arts and athletics instead of crime, gang-banging, and many other things that surrounded them growing up in Stockton. As for his work teaching children jiu-jitsu, which was hurled at him like an insult, Diaz showed similar pride in it.
"I come from a long lineage of hard-working, top-ranked MMA fighters, top-ranked jiu-jitsu competitors," he continued.
"And then as far as teaching jiu-jitsu, yeah I do seminars. I try to push martial arts out there, inspire people.
"That's the only thing that kind of irritated me. There was no logic. It was kind of uncalled for. It seemed real rehearsed, like he was plotting on trying to make a fool out of me or something."
In one glib, likely practiced statement, McGregor called Diaz a gangster, in large part because of his ethnicity and where he grew up, while also mocking the positive work he does in his community. Diaz understands the trash-talk game, but he refuses to be ashamed of who he actually is, and where he came from.
"I work hard. He talks all this work hard stuff. No one works harder than me," he concluded.
"If he came with me, he wouldn't make it halfway through the week."
