Diaz needs to be ‘locked in’ to avoid ‘embarrassing himself’ at UFC 310

Nick Diaz has an uphill battle ahead of him if he wants to re-establish himself as a force in the UFC, according to former double champion Daniel Cormier.

Diaz is set to face Vicente Luque at UFC 310 on December 7th in what will be his first bout since a disastrous comeback fight against Robbie Lawler in 2021. That fight was switched last-second from welterweight to middleweight and ended with Diaz refusing to stand up in the third round. Later we’d learn the former Strikeforce champion barely trained for the fight and competed with a severely injured neck.

So how will he turn up for UFC 310? That’s a concern for Cormier, who discussed the match-up on the latest episode of Good Guy / Bad Guy.

“When he fought Robbie Lawler, I was so excited,” he said. “He’s been back on the triathlons. He looks better than he even did in his prime. Then when he got into the octagon, he looked nothing like that person. He looked like a guy that was pushing 40, that hadn’t fought in many, many years. And I didn’t know if he still had that fight in him.”

“Now, Vicente Luque is or is thought to be on the decline. I kinda judged him based on how bad Joaquin Buckley beat him … maybe I didn’t see how good Joaquin Buckley is, as opposed to the state of Vicente Luque’s career. I still think it’s a lot for Nick Diaz. Nick Diaz struggled with Robbie Lawler, and Robbie Lawler was only one fight away from retiring. Vicente Luque is not going anywhere. It’s a tough fight.”

“I think for Nick, he has to be really locked in if he wants to go out there and not embarrass himself,” Cormier added. “Everything that he ever did in the octagon starts to get diminished whenever you go out there and you do what you did against Robbie, which was he quit. He was like, ‘I don’t wanna do this.’ Right? You had to make a decision, and he said, ‘I don’t I don’t wanna do this right now. I’m done. I don’t wanna fight.’”

As for this upcoming fight in December, “DC” is left with more questions than answers.

“I’m not certain where Nick’s at with his training,” he said. “It’s very hard to get information from Nick. It’s very hard to get a return phone call or information on what’s going on there, but his body started to look pretty good.”

Will it continue to look good all the way up to UFC 310, or will we have a rehash of UFC 266? It’s hard to know with Nick. He was supposed to fight Luque on August 3rd in Abu Dhabi originally, and that fight got scrapped completely. Anything is possible when it comes to the elder Diaz brother. We can only hope he shows up fit and ready to fight come December.