The man prepared to promote a Nick Diaz (25-7 MMA, 6-4 UFC) boxing contest now says the Strikeforce welterweight champion will not be entering the squared circle anytime soon.
Don Chargin today announced via press release that Diaz has determined it's in his "best interest to focus on his primary combat sport and profession."
Chargin also referenced a potential "opportunity of a lifetime" for Diaz, fueling further speculation of a pending matchup with UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre (22-2 MMA, 16-2 UFC). However, UFC president Dana White continues to insist Diaz is far from UFC-bound.
"We will see," White told MMAjunkie.com (
www.mmajunkie.com). "There are still a lot of hurdles."
Diaz aligned himself with boxing promoter Don Chagrin two years ago but continued to fight and flourish in MMA, winning the Strikeforce welterweight title and defending it three times. This past December, he signed a new multi-fight contract with Strikeforce that allowed him one professional boxing match in 2011.
That was four months before the UFC purchased Strikeforce. However, Diaz's original contract stayed intact, and White said his promotion would honor the deal if pressed. However, according to several sources, White met with Diaz this past week with the aim of preventing Diaz from boxing former IBF champion Jeff Lacy.
Chargin didn't detail exactly what led to the decision, but he did allude to some potential opportunities for Diaz in the MMA cage.
"Nick is a good kid and a very exciting fighter," Chargin stated. "Right now, he has an opportunity of a lifetime as it pertains to his MMA career. While I don't doubt that Nick and his team were serious about taking the big step into boxing, it only makes sense for him to finish what he started and see how far he can go in MMA before he does anything in boxing.
"It's all about timing. … We began these discussions over two years ago, and nobody would have imagined the type of demand that there currently is for Nick as a mixed martial artist."
Several MMA pundits have speculated that Diaz and St-Pierre might be tapped as coaches on the upcoming season of "The Ultimate Fighter," which begins filming the first week of June. However, White said that plan is currently "not even a thought."
Nevertheless, Diaz's manager, Cesar Gracie, added more fuel to the St-Pierre fire. Earlier this month, Gracie told MMAjunkie.com that a St-Pierre fight is really the only thing that would change Diaz's mind. Now, he says, boxing doesn't even "make sense."
"There are some people that have said we were just posturing to go into professional boxing, and they don't understand that this thing is something we had been working on since 2009," Gracie stated. "It wasn't just out of nowhere, but at this point in time, there's a certain chance that comes along once in a very long while and it only makes sense to stick to MMA as of right now. Nick's been working really hard to get to this point in his MMA career and it wouldn't make sense for us to make that transition into boxing right now.
"If this were a couple months ago or if certain fights had played out differently, we'd definitely be ready to go into boxing, but that's not how it played out. Don Chargin is a great boxing promoter, and he understood our dilemma completely, and I thank him for that."
(Pictured: Nick Diaz)
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