gettin kinda ridiculous.
Nick Diaz is a no show at the open workouts.
Some updates from Marc Raimondi:
Dave Sholler says Nick Diaz did not get on flights yesterday or this morning. They are confident he'll be here this afternoon.
Sholler said that Diaz was at the airport yesterday and "elected" not to get on the plane. His bags arrived in Vegas. Diaz dos not.
Dave Sholler says Nick Diaz did not get on flights yesterday or this morning. They are confident he'll be here this afternoon.
Marc also tweeted that Dana, who is in Arizona doing PR work, and Lorenzo will be meeting to discuss possible penalties.
From MMA Fighting:
"We had staff that saw him yesterday in the airport and he elected to not get on the flight," Sholler said Wednesday before open workouts. "His bags did arrive. Again, I can't speak to why Nick decided not to get on the flight, but we're moving on as if the fight is happening Saturday. We're very confident he's going to be here today."
Sholler said the UFC expects Diaz to be in Vegas on Wednesday afternoon. Diaz did not get on scheduled flights Tuesday or Wednesday morning, Sholler said.
Diaz meets Anderson Silva at UFC 183 on Saturday night here at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. As of now, the fight is still on and Sholler said that UFC president Dana White and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta will corroborate later about a potential penalty for Diaz.
"We're moving forward," Sholler said. "The fight is happening. We feel pretty confident he's going to get here today."
Diaz's agent Lloyd Pierson told MMAFighting.com on Wednesday morning that Diaz would arrive in time for open workouts Wednesday afternoon. He said that White's tweets about Diaz being missing were in jest.
MMA Fighting reporting comments Dana made on The Jim Rome show:
"Nick is being Nick. We don't know where Nick is. I literally Instagram'ed a picture of him on a milk carton today. He's M.I.A.," White said. "First of all, we have a show calledUFC Embedded, they showed up there Sunday to start filming him -- couldn't find him. We went through his management team and they set it up, they said ‘what we'll do is we'll set up a team dinner, you guys can film at the team dinner.'
"None of them showed up at the team dinner, then nobody answered their phones when the guys started calling. So then yesterday Nick was supposed to land in Las Vegas at 2:20. He missed his flight. His management team called and said, ‘book him another flight at 7:30.' Not only did he miss the first one, he missed the second flight. His bags made it to Vegas and he never did."
Diaz is slated to challenge former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva this Saturday in the main event of UFC 183. The blockbuster fight is expected to close out what has been a remarkably successful January campaign for the UFC, but first Diaz has to get to Las Vegas.
UFC Vice President of Public Relations Dave Sholler announced at Wednesday's open workouts that Diaz was present at the airport the previous night but "elected" not to step onto his flight.
For his part, White appeared to be unworried, stating that an incident like this a few years ago would have driven him crazy -- such as when Diaz infamously no-showed open workouts at UFC 158 -- but now he's come to expect it. And besides, it's not as if he can just cancel the weekend's festivities.
"The problem is this: it's too late," White said. "I already made the fight. We're sitting here on Wednesday. There's a lot of things he doesn't show up for, but he always shows up for the fights, so I'm counting on him showing up.
"I did it to myself again. I made a fight with Nick Diaz, a big main event fight. You know, when you get him in the office and you sit down, and he's like, ‘Well, you know, I feel like I haven't been paid right. Pay me right.' He's being paid right for this fight. It doesn't matter how much you pay him, he's not going to... I did it to myself, so I can't sit here and cry about Nick Diaz. It's Nick being Nick."