caseharts - 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.
He is the champ because he was gifted a decision over Frankie Edgar.
The first fight he was not. He won clearly. The rematch occurred due to BS controversy from fans who can't judge fights correctly. But yes, the 2nd fight was very close. I scored it a draw
burner22 - 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.
sillyscreenname - 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.
Silly screen name sums it up well. I would also add that bendo is about the worst matchup for nate at 155lbs, and his game plan was perfect and unexpected. We all thought he would play the in and out game ala condit, but bendo came out and took it to nate much more aggressively than anyone I heard thought he would.
I'd love to see nate get a few big wins and another shot at bendo.
With his brother and shields being healthy I don't think Gil being out really hurt that much. Nate had no answer for the wrestling. Something He has never shown a great ability to deal with.
I love reading all you Diaz fan boi's making excuses..... Nate got beat by a better fighter... really gonna talk smack during a fight you getting your ass handed to you? lmao
burner22 - 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.
You're joking right?
No I'm not joking. What part of what i said do u disagree with
