On Nate Diaz and the 'Allegory of the Cafeteria'

If you’ve ever wanted to see life through Nate Diaz’s eyes, you could do a lot worse than what shall henceforth be known as “The Allegory of the Cafeteria.” It goes a little something like this:

“You’re in the school cafeteria, right? Lunch time. Remember high school? And somebody’s like, ‘Hey, look around the room. Who do you want to fight? Who do you want to fight in here?’ Random Tuesday. Week is going fine. Who do you want to fight in this cafeteria? Remember the cafeteria? There’s 300 people in there, right? You look around the room like, ‘(Expletive) man, I don’t really want to fight anybody.’ Will I fight anybody? Yeah, I guess. Do I want to? No. First of all, that’s rude.”

The first thing I should admit here is that I’ve never been in this cafeteria. But now, thanks to Diaz’s eloquence on his very own mid-week episode of “The MMA Hour,” I feel like I have. I can picture it. I can put myself right there at a table with young Nate Diaz, both of us minding our business, dreading fifth period Algebra, just trying to finish our sandwiches and get through the day.

But in this one overcrowded room the threat of violence is never far from our minds, apparently. We don’t seek it out, but we’re ready for it. We have accepted it as a fact of life. We are not particularly happy about it.

To the Diaz brothers, the MMA world is that cafeteria. It always has been. It’s why they keep trying to leave, because they know that while they’re here we won’t ever leave them alone. They keep trying to eat their Cheetos, and we keep poking them in the ribs, saying, “How about that guy over there? Would you fight him?”

It never occurred to us that each time they said yes it might have only been because, for one reason or another, they felt like they couldn’t say no.

This seems especially relevant for Diaz (19-11 MMA,14-9 UFC) now. Two fights with Conor McGregor brought him a lot of money, according to UFC President Dana White, but as he tries to enjoy it the powers that be keep poking him and then pointing across the room at one lightweight or another. How about him? Would you fight him?

The answer lately has been the same: no, no, no. At least not without a significant bump in pay, and therein lies the rub.

Diaz, we’re told, wants too much money. And the UFC remains committed to the idea that he’s a nobody who is powerless to move that stubborn needle, so why should he get a raise? It’s an idea undermined by the continued fascination with him in spite of – or maybe even because of – his inactivity.

Diaz is 3-4 in his past seven fights, and still he gets an “MMA Hour” episode all to himself just to announce that he’s got nothing to announce. What’s more, people actually watched. Why wouldn’t they? How many other fighters could compare this sport to a cafeteria that’s part “Breakfast Club” and part “Shawshank Redemption” and have it all make a strange sort of sense? Who else could entertain fight fans just by explaining why he’s not going to fight?

If you ask fans of theirs to explain the enduring appeal of the two Diaz boys, chances are that at some point they’ll hit on the topic of “realness.” Nick and Nate? Those guys keep it real. There’s something undeniably authentic about them. Even when they don’t make complete sense they somehow make more sense than anyone else.

“If anything I’m like the superhero coming in with this anti-bull(expletive),” Nick said in the lead-up to his fight with Georges St-Pierre. And though we didn’t know exactly what he meant, come on – we knew what he meant.

It’s the same thing now. The UFC offers Nate fights. He turns them down in part because he can, but also because he’s tired of being goaded into cafeteria combat for the benefit of others. He’s tired of being used, in one way or another, and unlike a lot of his peers he recognizes that using people is one of the things the fight game does best.

Why keep playing a game like that if you don’t have to? What do you think he is, crazy? Well, OK, maybe a little crazy, but he’s not nuts. And if you think that alone makes him ill-suited for the world of MMA, what have you just admitted?

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