Nick Diaz Hype Spinning out of Control

When people start saying that Nick Diaz should be considered one of the top 10 pound-for-pound fighters, it is clear that the hype is very much out of control.

There are, of course, some people out there who have a fairly realistic understanding of Diaz's abilities, but many who haven't taken the time to really study his career and record seem to have a very skewed vision of his place in mixed martial arts.

In truth, the current MMA landscape has created nearly the perfect storm to allow the Nick Diaz Hype train to pick up momentum to the point that Mauro Ranallo can say that Diaz is "looking like Andre Ward, looking like he may even belong in the Showtime Super Six Tournament" without fear of somebody calling him the worst of Strikeforce cheerleaders.

Whenever the UFC commentators express such hyperbole, MMA watchdogs are quick to point it out, but it seems like nobody is willing to call out Strikeforce for doing the same thing.

Aside from merely not calling out Strikeforce for its extravagant exaggerations, MMA writers and analysts simply aren't willing to put Strikeforce's achievements into context.

Perhaps some writers feel like because Strikeforce is the new UFC competition, we should be helping it in any way we can—at least until it can fend for itself.

As much as I like cheering for the underdog, I think we should be beyond the point where we need to baby Strikeforce.

Strikeforce announced itself as a rival to the UFC last year when it signed Fedor Emelianenko—and if it wants to be a legitimate rival, it's time we treated it like one. Considering that point, it's time that we start putting Diaz's recent victory and his place in the MMA world into some real context.

Analysis of Diaz's Win Over Zaromskis

A win over a top 20 opponent is never a bad thing, but after such a win, some people are saying that Diaz should be crowned as the WAMMA welterweight champion—and that we should tell GSP that the world already has enough blankets.

A string of head-kick knockouts over some welterweights around the top 30 was enough to grab Zaromskis some serious attention.  Yet despite his fight-ending weapons, Zaromskis really isn't the type of fighter who matches up well against Diaz.

If Zaromskis had managed to land some head kicks, it wouldn't have been good for Diaz, but against good competition, it is usually fairly difficult to actually land a head kick.

Landing such a head kick becomes even harder when you're worried about getting taken down.  Against Diaz, Zaromskis hardly threw any kicks at all and chose to rely upon his boxing instead.

Zaromskis was able to knock Diaz down with a punch, but once again, because of his inability to engage Diaz on the ground, he wasn't able to capitalize on the situation.

When the fight came back to the feet, it became clear that Zaromskis was outclassed as a boxer.  The fight reminds me very much of the fight between Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Luiz Cane, another fight between two southpaws.

Cane, despite having a more diverse striking arsenal than Nogueira, didn't really have any answer for Nogueira's superior boxing.  Making matters worse was the fact that Cane didn't seem to have had any experience fighting other southpaws.  As a result, he kept on getting lit up every time Nogueira decided to throw the the straight left punch.

Zaromskis found himself in that exact same position against Diaz, and he didn't have any option to clinch up because Diaz was the better striker. Had we known that Zaromskis would be so impotent against another southpaw, the result should have been academic.

All of the above considered, Diaz's win shouldn't have been unforeseeable—or even particularly impressive. It should have been expected.

Looking at the facts, it should be regarded as nothing more than a good win over a top 15 opponent, but not even an opponent who was really much of a stylistic threat.

It should be, needless to say, that such a win shouldn't put Diaz in the top 10 pound-for-pound, let alone the top five at welterweight. Yet people have found some interesting ways to think otherwise, and so we must now consider some of the mythology and spurious arguments used to hype up Diaz.

The Mythological Nick Diaz

There are at least six different, largely ridiculous arguments used to hype up Diaz: his boxing credentials, Cesar Gracie black belt, young age, weight class jumping, exaggerated wins, and disputed losses.

Boxing: The Strikeforce commentators expended a lot of ammunition in their attempts to hype up Diaz as a pound-for-pound fighter, but none were more laughable than the comments about Diaz's boxing abilities.

While Diaz's boxing is far above the average level in MMA, it was far exaggerated by Ranallo when he said that Diaz is "looking like Andre Ward, looking like he may even belong in the Showtime Super Six Tournament."

The fact that none of my friends spewed up their beer upon hearing this statement tells me that people have really bought into this myth about Diaz's boxing.

In contrast to Joe Rogan and Ronallo's comments, Diaz's official professional boxing record stands at only 1-0. It's a perfect record, but a very short one.

The fact that Diaz has trained with Ward should only count for so much. A fighter is not equal to the sum of his training partners.

Such a truth is no more clear in MMA than when looking at Georges St. Pierre's training partners. If I kept expecting Keith Jardine, Donald Cerrone, and Yves Jabouin to start wrestling like GSP, then I would be sorely disappointed by now.

Or perhaps BJ Penn's training partners are all of a sudden going to become prodigies themselves. Shane Nelson can only dream about that one.

None of this by itself says that we should discount Diaz's boxing abilities. What this does say is that we should judge his boxing by how well it helps him win fights.

Cesar Gracie Black Belt: The same goes for his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which Ranallo and the rest of the Strikeforce broadcast team trumpets with zeal.

A Cesar Gracie black belt certainly wouldn't be easy to earn, but a black belt in BJJ isn't nearly as rare as it was even five years ago.

Black belts are now quite common in the upper levels of MMA.  In fact, at the present time, the only UFC champion who doesn't have a BJJ black belt is Brock Lesnar.

There is an entire stratosphere above the level of mere black-belt holders that is ignored by holding up the Cesar Gracie black belt as if it were the gold standard. 

Without placing the Cesar Gracie black belt into an absolute context, suffice it to say that out of the 17 current BJJ World Champions, none is from the Cesar Gracie school.

Weight Class Jumping: Diaz has some interesting wins, but despite being competitive in three divisions, he hasn't really beaten much top competition in any one division.

This weight class jumping is used by some to show how good Diaz is, but in reality, it only causes confusion.

Some people have tried to make the case that Diaz is really a lightweight who chooses to fight at higher weights for the challenge.  However, Diaz probably can't even make 155 pounds anymore, and when he lost to KJ Noons, people said Diaz lost because lightweight really isn't his best weight class.

Diaz missed weight by nine pounds for his 160-pound fight against Muhsin Corrbrey.

Recent catch-weight fights at 180 pounds should also only be weighed so heavily, when you consider that Frank Shamrock and Scott Smith weren't exactly top 10 when Diaz fought them.

Age: Diaz started fighting at a relatively young age, and he is only 26 years old.

In order to excuse many of Diaz's early losses, while hypothesizing that he has improved greatly in recent history, many people point out that Diaz was only 21 to 24 years old when he accumulated his UFC losses.

This argument ignores the fact that Karo Parisyan, Joe Riggs, and Jeremy Jackson, three of the fighters who beat Diaz early in his career, are less than a year older than Diaz.

Despite Diaz's BJJ accomplishments, he's not going to win ADCC or the Mundials any time soon.

In MMA, Diaz has not actually defeated many boxers with his own boxing.  The only real boxer who stood toe-to-toe with Diaz was Noons, who was lighting up Diaz fairly badly before Diaz was stopped because of cuts. Noons is only 11-2 as a boxer and is a far stretch from being world class in the sport.

Far more important than age differences or any weight class jumping should be the actual worth of victories and defeats, regardless of weight class.

Exaggerated Wins: Diaz has some nice wins under his belt, but it should be worth putting them into context.

Recently, Diaz has notable wins over Smith, Shamrock, and Takanori Gomi.

Smith wasn't able to put together enough wins to stay in the UFC, and when he's won over any notable opponents, it has only been after taking a pretty severe beating for most of the fight.

Shamrock was once considered a top-level fighter, but he hasn't won a fight against another top fighter since 1999.

Gomi was once considered to be the best lightweight fighter in the world, but he was showing signs of decline by the time he fought Diaz. Some might argue about Gomi's form at the time, but even if we say that Gomi was a top fighter when he fought Diaz, it is still a fact that Diaz has no wins over current top 10 lightweights or welterweights.

The only victory Diaz owns over a current top 10 fighter is his win over middleweight Robbie Lawler.

At the time, however, Lawler was fighting at welterweight and was one fight away from being dropped from the UFC.

Disputed losses: If arguments can be made about the merit of Diaz's wins, the arguments only intensify when considering his losses.

Diaz himself has said he believes that his UFC record should be 9-1, as opposed to the actual 6-4 record, including losses to Karo Parisyan, Diego Sanchez, Joe Riggs, and Sean Sherk, all at welterweight.

As previously mentioned, many of Diaz's losses are excused as a result of age, but aside from that, Diaz has come up with some other reasons as to why he believes he's lost.

Most prominent is his assertion that he's simply been outwrestled, and as a result, the judges have ignored his offense in favor of wrestling.

After having rewatched all of these fights, I believe it is worth mentioning that Diaz was competitive in every single one of those losses. That being said, he didn't exactly do enough to walk out with victories.

The best objection I can make against Diaz's complaint is that his loss to Sherk wasn't simply due to wrestling. Sherk also was able to outbox Diaz from the inside for much of the fight.

Of course, Diaz's apologists will note that the Sherk fight happened nearly four years ago, and that he has improved much since that point.  If someone makes such an argument, I would also point out that if they are going to discount that win because of elapsed time, then they would also need to discount Diaz's win over Lawler, probably the most significant win in Diaz's career.

The other six wins in the UFC are mostly over opponents not good enough to stay in the organization or at welterweight.

The Real Nick Diaz

Despite my objections to the recent surge in hype for Nick Diaz, I do have a lot of respect for his abilities.

Diaz's combination of boxing and BJJ is enough to make a competitive fight with most fighters within the welterweight division.

That being said, although he can stay competitive, I have a hard time picking Diaz to win over any of the top welterweights.

The top welterweights like Fitch, Koscheck, and St. Pierre are elite wrestlers with enough BJJ skills to take down and control Diaz without being threatened by his submissions.

Aside from the top three, I could see Diaz having some success against some of the other fighters in the top 10, but all of those fighters have at least done more in the welterweight division recently to earn their rankings. So to put Diaz above some of them at this point would be a mistake, I think.

Overall, I think one could probably reasonably justify a ranking somewhere in the 7-10 range at welterweight.

That's a far cry from the top 10 pound-for-pound ideas currently being thrown around.

In all honesty, this weekend's upcoming fight between Mike Swick and Paulo Thiago is just about as relevant as Diaz's fight with Zaromskis, but it won't get nearly as much coverage, simply because it's not the headlining fight for a UFC rival promotion.

Aside from that, when Diaz says he believes he can beat St. Pierre and Anderson Silva, it's worth mentioning that Diaz smokes a lot of marijuana.