Nate Diaz is best known for his exploits in the UFC, but he’s obviously not opposed to getting into a scrap outside the cage when the occasion calls for it.
This past weekend, the 38-year-old veteran got into a pair of altercations while attending the Misfits Boxing 6 card in New Orleans, where he was supporting his longtime friend and teammate Chris Avila. While he was in the arena, Diaz tossed a water bottle at reality TV star Chase DeMoor that led to a brawl breaking out as security rushed to intervene.
Later that same night, another fight erupted outside a bar, where Diaz ended up choking out Logan Paul lookalike Rodney Peterson before dropping him on the ground. Peterson later showed off his bloody head after Diaz choked him unconscious.
New Orleans police subsequently issued an arrest warrant for Nate Diaz on suspicion of second-degree battery due to the altercation with Peterson.
BKFC star Mike Perry, who has engaged in a few street fights of his own over the years, saw the footage involving Diaz and couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of everything that unfolded.
“His little street fight, it looked like he choked out Logan Paul with a guillotine,” Perry told The Fighter vs. The Writer. “The guy kind of looked like Logan Paul, they were saying that in the comments.”
There’s still no clear indication what led to the incident that ended with Peterson being choked out, but videos showed him approaching Diaz with his hands up just before the UFC veteran grabbed Peterson in the submission.
Peterson later claimed he was going to get revenge on Diaz and “knock him the f*** out” if they run into each other again. DeMoor, who was disqualified in his own boxing match earlier that same night, called Diaz “soft” after getting caught up in that same brawl outside the bar.
For his part, Perry doesn’t know what led to the altercation with Diaz, but he knows from personal experience that some people go looking for trouble when trying to square up to a professional fighter.
“Sometimes people see fighters in real life, they see fighters they watch on TV in real life, and I don’t know if they want to test themselves or they want to just be rude or just try to maybe be confident in front of some girl they’re with or something, and be like, ‘You know this fighter? Well, watch this.’ And they try to be disrespectful or they think that we’re under watch and we can’t be normal or bad people, and we’re not going to bust your ass if you come over to us being all disrespectful,” Perry said. “I definitely don’t want those things to happen, but sometimes people do the wrong things.”
Seeing Diaz get drawn into a street fight wasn’t exactly a surprise to Perry, who recounted a story he heard about a person who won a contest to spend a day with the former The Ultimate Fighter winner and it turned out just as they expected.
“I always think about this video I saw with this guy, ‘I won this thing where I get to hang out with Nate Diaz and his crew and we go to the fights, we go to the club, we go to hang out, and it was exactly what you would think it would be,’” Perry said. “‘In the club, we’re drinking and Nate’s pushing people out of the way and slapping people and he gets in a fight with this guy and he totally knocks this guy out and I’m just sitting here watching all this.’
“He was like, ‘It was such an amazing experience and it was such a prize to win that, and it was everything you thought it would be.’”
As far as Diaz’s actions this past weekend, Perry isn’t trying to judge anybody, but he also understands why these kinds of things happen.
“We’re fighters,” Perry said. “We sell fights and we get mad at anybody who thinks they can beef with us in a one-on-one matchup, so I understand them.”
Taking inspiration from Diaz and his own past encounters in street fights, Perry says he’s carrying that same kind of mentality into his upcoming showdown with Luke Rockhold at BKFC 41.
There’s still going to be plenty of technique and strategy involved, but ultimately Perry sees this fight as do-or-die with no third direction available.
“I do try to have that Diaz mindset,” Perry explained. “If a guy comes up to me — with this bare-knuckle boxing, especially against a bigger opponent, it’s like who is this big guy in the corner of the bar talking s*** thinks that nobody in here is going to bust his ass because he’s the bigger guy? And he thinks, ‘People are afraid of me and we’re drinking in the bar on Saturday night.’ I’m going to bust his ass.
“That’s what this is going to be like. A Saturday night street fight with a couple shots of tequila.”
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