It's no secret that Gilbert Melendez has been on the shelf with an injury, but how bad do you think it affected Nate Diaz not having Melendez to train with for a guy like Benson Henderson?
If they came to fight again down the road, is that a fight you'd be interested in seeing again?
And how do you guys think Gilbert is going to do?
I wouldn't be interested. I saw Ben outclassing Diaz on the feet and on the ground before the fight occured, and that's exactly what transpired. Nate is gifted, but Ben is the more well put-together fighter and it showed in their fight.
As for Gil, I see him getting taken down throughout the fight, nonstop scrambles with Ben always coming out on top. I don't see him winning, either.
Do I want to see Henderson and Nate fight again? Not really. Diaz earned his chance legitimately, and gave it his best shot. But his best shot just wasn't anywhere near good enough. There was never a point in that fight where Henderson wasn't in complete control. That being said, if Diaz turns around and starts annihilating people, he can definitely get a second shot. Just not for a good long while, I suspect.
As for Melendez, I suspect he'll do exponentially better than Diaz against Henderson, since his style lends more to a competitive fight. I still see Henderson winning however. Should be a good fight though, if it happens.
I think getting his eye fucked up early in the fight made it almost impossible for Nate to even last the full 5 rounds.
I'd definitely like to see a rematch down the line cos that was definitely not the best Nate Diaz that night.
I still think Nate needs to work a lot on defending leg kicks cos even though he couldn't see out of 1 eye for most of the fight, it looked like he wasn't even trying o defend them.
Layzie you must see Nate when he's in training, does he spend any time practicing leg kick defense? I'm not trying to be an asshole, it's just that after his fight with Cowboy you could tell it was a major weakness of his standup. 
Nate literally had nothing in that fight.
He's been training with Gil his whole life, I doubt going one camp without him completely ruined Nate's game and made him forget how to fight.
He should get another shot if he wins another big string of fights, but I don't see it going any differently. Benson's skills are going to keep improving and Nate's athleticism is probably not.
If he earns the shot then of course I'd watch it again but it was a one sided fight so it will be a while before we see it again. 
I think his eye affected him more. He said he couldn't see out of it from the first round onwards. In Dana's recent video blog he says he couldn't see shit and didn't wanna try and throw punches because he'd get socked.
Nate's eye was fucked early. Otherwise it's a different fight. I don't see how Nick and Jake Shields are not capable of pushing him to be ready. It was the eye in my mind that made it such a lopsided fight.
yellow wrkahlc -I wouldn't be interested. I saw Ben outclassing Diaz on the feet and on the ground before the fight occured, and that's exactly what transpired. Nate is gifted, but Ben is the more well put-together fighter and it showed in their fight.
As for Gil, I see him getting taken down throughout the fight, nonstop scrambles with Ben always coming out on top. I don't see him winning, either.
This except I think Ben can finish Gil.
I don't know how much that specifically affected him but I think there were a lot of factors that played together in negatively affecting Nate's performance that night. I wanted to make a thread for this but this is a good place to post and ask you about your opinion too. I'd really like your take on this. Because I think something else might've played much more of a role here but I'm totally just speculating.
The various things that happened are:
1. As you mentioned he didn't have his usual training partner available. Definitely not a good thing.
2. He missed weight and seemed visibly upset when told about it by Dana on the stage. Now I don't know if he was upset because he had to cut more weight and already had a tough cut or because it was imply embarrassing to him to not have known about the no allowance thing for title fights. Either way this can certainly affect a fighters confidence going into the fight and just fuck with your head on top of potentially having affected his energy levels.
3. Getting punched in the eye and having a blurred vision for the rest of the fight will certainly diminish most of your standup prowess. Just look at how badly GSP did against Shields because of his impaired vision in that fight.
4. This has been overlooked by everyone as far as I know but I think it might've been the most important reason Nate didn't bring his A game even before the eye punch. It's no secret that Nate idolizes his brother a bit for getting him into MMA but considering what he said about Gilbert Melendez in his post fight interview after beating Jim Miller, the same probably holds true for Gil, I would think. If that's the case, it's possible that in the back of his head he didn't want to take Gil's opportunity to win the 155er belt.
I know the plan was for Gil to go down to 145 to fight for a title there if Nate would've won but when asked about that in an interview Gil seemed less than enthusiastic about it and said that it would be a rough cut for him to go down that far. So considering how inconvenient it would be for Gil and how much Nate respects him, do you think that could've been a factor also? I think overall just everything I listed kind of played together on top of Benson being a really strong fighter and a bad match up for Nate on any day. I would like to see a rematch some time down the line though, I really want to see a Diaz/Condit 2 some day as well.
Guys. You can't put that whole fight on simply an eye. It's a legal strike. He didn't thumb Nate. Just like a brutal leg kick making someone limp isn't illegal. It sucks that Nate took one but fuck I have gifs with his hands down taunting bendo and getting dropped a good amount of times
Nate is an awesome fighter but Bendo is bendo and he's the champ for a reason.
I think nate is capable of doing better than he did against bendo
Fedoral Crime - I think getting his eye fucked up early in the fight made it almost impossible for Nate to even last the full 5 rounds.
I'd definitely like to see a rematch down the line cos that was definitely not the best Nate Diaz that night.
I still think Nate needs to work a lot on defending leg kicks cos even though he couldn't see out of 1 eye for most of the fight, it looked like he wasn't even trying o defend them.
Layzie you must see Nate when he's in training, does he spend any time practicing leg kick defense? I'm not trying to be an asshole, it's just that after his fight with Cowboy you could tell it was a major weakness of his standup.
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caseharts -yellow wrkahlc -I wouldn't be interested. I saw Ben outclassing Diaz on the feet and on the ground before the fight occured, and that's exactly what transpired. Nate is gifted, but Ben is the more well put-together fighter and it showed in their fight.
As for Gil, I see him getting taken down throughout the fight, nonstop scrambles with Ben always coming out on top. I don't see him winning, either.
This except I think Ben can finish Gil.
LayzieTheSavage -It's no secret that Gilbert Melendez has been on the shelf with an injury, but how bad do you think it affected Nate Diaz not having Melendez to train with for a guy like Benson Henderson?
If they came to fight again down the road, is that a fight you'd be interested in seeing again?
And how do you guys think Gilbert is going to do?
Huge nate Diaz fan here. But I think he was out classed,
Also according to nate the punch to tge eye was the excuse to not gil being hurt.
catching a punch directly in the eye socket probly had more of an impact.
I don't think it mattered if Nate had Melendez or not.
Bendo came in with a gameplan which was to distort Diaz's boxing(calf kicks, which GSP will also use on Nick) and clinch/wrestle. Having the help of/training with Melendez would not make much of a difference. My opinion.
Not having 1 specific training partner could surely not have had a massive impact on Nate. It's a dick move by layzie to even bring that up. The reason people hate on the ceasar camp is because their fans come out with ridiculous shit like this.
I would love to see Nate fight him again. I'd pay to watch Nate fight almost anyone, dude is a warrior. He has some glaring holes in his game tho that he needs to fix. Desperately needs to find an answer to leg kicks.
Bendo was a nightmare matchup for Nate. Strong wrestler, fast, with great sub defense.
Nate has always had trouble with guys that can physically overpower him - note in his three fight winning streak into the title fight, he didn't get matched up with any of those types of guys (see what I did there?).
Look at his losses -- MacDonald, Kim, Stevenson, Guida.
Heck, Nate was getting beat by Manny Gamburyan at the TUF5 finale. Manny would have won that fight if not for his shoulder injury.
I love watching Nate fight but he's always going to have trouble because of his build.
HandyDarsh - I think nate is capable of doing better than he did against bendo
Woulda shoulda coulda