UFC 244: What Nate Diaz, Jorge Masvidal and Fans Can Learn from the Original BMF

When Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson straps the BMF belt—oh yeah, they built a real belt—around the waist of Saturday's winner between Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz, he won't actually be crowning the first official BMF, as UFC brass would have you believe. 

And no, the original BMF isn't Conor McGregor or Jon Jones or Ronda Rousey or any other MMA fighter. Or any other athlete, for that matter.

The original BMF is a man by the name of John Shaft.

Don't even think about laughing. Shaft has a lot to teach us about why this BMF belt appears to hold as much or even more interest—both for the MMA community and the wider sports world—than any of the UFC's "real" championships (or champions) as the UFC 244 main event approaches from New York's Madison Square Garden.

Maybe you've heard of this man John Shaft. Cue the music. In the eponymous 1970s book and film series—along with the remakes, if you want to do that to yourself—Shaft enjoys such activities as being a private detective, kicking ass, taking names and sticking it to the man. Shaft, like Diaz and Masvidal both, is a "bad motherf--ker."  

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Here's the point, and it's got nothing to do with the fact that Shaft was a mixed martial artist, although that's a neat little tidbit in its own right. He's an archetype for the modern antihero. He cast the die for what we're really seeing when we see Diaz and Masvidal reaching these heights and packing the most famous house in sports. Yes, Shaft is a complicated man. But in his case, that doesn't put him out of the reach of someone who can be understood—as evidenced by the theme song lyrics, emphasizing a certain woman.

Shaft is human, in other words. To be a real BMF, which really just means antihero, you have to be human. You have to be at least mildly heroic. True BMFs don't punch old men in bars (ahem).

Neither Diaz nor Masvidal is a boy scout. These are coarse men, from upbringings so hard—Diaz in poverty in Stockton, California, Masvidal the backyard fight clubs of Miami—they are the stuff of fan lore. They are mercurial (especially Diaz, whose recent drug-testing tempest in a teapot threatened to shelve this whole enterprise). Don't hold your breath for poetry or political dissertation. Anyone who gets caught looking for a heart of gold is liable to catch a three-piece and a soda for his or her troubles. 

And yet, you get the feeling these aren't the types of guys who are, just as a hypothetical example, disliked by their teammates. There are no arrests, or reports of them acting out against coaches or fans. It's hard to imagine either of them stepping over a homeless person. For as much of each other's blood as these two will attempt to spill Saturday, and as much as they've both bought in to the BMF myth-making with their reams of braggadocio, there has been nothing but respect between them as men, a game-recognize-game dynamic that would seem phony, stilted or even quaint in the hands of so many other duos.

To be a true antihero in the Shaft mold, you need both sides of this coin, and you need both sides to be authentic. No one in the UFC embodies this like Diaz.

For all the swagger and posture he brings to news conferences and, when he deigns to enter it, the cage, he's still just a guy who wants to smoke some weed and do a triathlon. You get the feeling that if Diaz encountered an older person, he might be more inclined than anything else to help them across the road—the kind of thing McGregor once mockingly "accused" him of doing.

The Masvidal dynamic is far less well-known, but it's plenty similar. He's been around since 2003, racking up a 34-13 pro record in that time, a far more extensive collection than Diaz's 20-11. But his ascendance to main event level was meteoric following a 2019 that saw him earn three post-fight bonuses in two knockout wins, crowned by a UFC record five-second knockout of theretofore undefeated Ben Askren, himself a would-be antihero figure.

Masvidal talks plenty tough—witness as just one example his insistence that all reporters on a Monday media call refer to him as "Mr. Masvidal."

"Class is in session," he declared before the questions began.

But the other side of the BMF coin was evident even in this cockiness. There was a winking effect to it, which grew more evident as Masvidal carefully answered each question posed—between repeated unfulfilled threats to hang up if anyone asked him the wrong thing.

That wasn't even the best part, though. When asked about his reaction to Diaz's drug-testing drama, Masvidal could easily have said he blocked it out, kept his nose to the grindstone and what have you.

But the BMF candidate didn't say that. Instead, he did this weird thing that real humans sometimes do called telling the truth.

And it turns out Gamebred is a stress eater. 

"By day two, the anxiety hit," he said. "Two pizzas later, and hot fries, and all the things that I shouldn't have put in my body, the coaching staff got ahold of me and they were able to calm my anxiety down."

This eventually led to Masvidal discussing his struggles with depression and anxiety—alongside, of course, a nice plug for a book project. Who else but a BMF is pulling that off?

The fight itself mirrors this. Beneath brawling stylistic exteriors are nuanced and well-rounded skill sets, powered by thoughtfully honed athleticism. Both are more than capable of a stoppage—a combined 32 between them—but not by way of some WWE-style signature move. Although a finish is entirely possible, it's equally possible the thrills will be interstitial, a jab or guard-pass that swings momentum just a shade and looks a lot nastier in slow motion.

No matter what happens, you get the feeling the loser will raise the better man's hand. When you're talking about the UFC's BMF, there's never a need for unification. 

"I think it just comes down to we both fight, and we're dogs in that cage, but at the same time we see the bullshit, and we don't want to play in the bullshit," Masvidal said on Monday's call. "You're not gonna tell me jump, or wear a suit, or do this. I'm gonna do what the F I feel like and when I want to do it. It's probably the reason it's taken me so long for the UFC to truly get behind me."

Taking a cue from the original BMF, being a great antihero is more than just being a tough dude. You have to be someone people actually want to root for. Is it possible the UFC, in these two uncooperative iconoclasts, have what are in fact two model citizens for the MMA times? 

Scott Harris covers MMA and other sports topics for Bleacher Report.