Nick Diaz's management recently announced that the fighter plans to return early in 2021. A number of notable fighters called him out, including former welterweight champion Tyron Woodley, who has in fact been calling for the fight with nick since 2016. On his The Hollywood Beatdown on TMZ Sports, Woodele talked about it
“If you want to fight, fight,” said Woodley. “We don’t need a big build-up. We don’t need a test weight cut. If you want to fight, fight. Sign a contract and get in the Octagon. It’s been so much talk about if he’s gonna fight. Even his brother, ‘Is he gonna come back?’ I think that they deserve the hype that they’ve gotten because when they were fighting years and years back, they weren’t getting paid hardly anything. Go back and pull up the public records on what Nate Diaz made the fight right before Conor McGregor. They’re kind of embarrassing compared to what he ended up making in that fight and the second fight.
“So when you look at it, I have to respect them for staying with it and staying to the point where they were still relevant enough to make the money that they probably deserved a long time ago. But if he wants to fight, just fight. What do we need to do this whole hoopla?”
“If he comes back to the sport, I think it will be good to have another household name back in the sport competing. But if he doesn’t, he doesn’t. I think he’s done enough in his career, in my opinion, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
“I think [he deserves it] because he was one of the original bad boys. There’s some people in the Hall of Fame that had never won a world title, whether it’s just a fight, there’s so many different categories of it. But when you think about it, he came over from Strikeforce, he had a crazy reputation then, and I think you’ve got to take some of that into account when you’re thinking about a Hall of Fame inductee. They bought the organization, they bought the rights to all those fights, so I think the accolades have to come with that.”
Woodley has a more pressing issue at present though - he despises and fights Colby Covington in the main event of UFC on ESPN+ 36 on Saturday.
“I want to knock him out to the point that when they’re raising my hand and they’re talking, they’re still gathering him,” said Woodley. “Hopefully, they’re stretchering him out and trying to get his legs to unstiffen, and still trying to get the mouthpiece out of his mouth. . . No I’m not gonna shake his hand. I’m not gonna shake his coach’s hand most likely. This is for real for me.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGmfnOa7kwI
h/t Jed Meshew for MMA Fighting