Strikeforce's Scott Coker Video: Nick Diaz Makes Very Good Money

Nick CaronApr 7, 2011

In a recent interview with MMA Fighting’s Ariel Helwani, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker had a response to words from Nick Diaz.

As one of the top welterweight mixed martial artists in the world, Diaz has been talking about how he is underpaid for a long time now, but Coker admitted that he didn’t see it that way at all.

“I felt so bad when he bought that Ferrari last week and that mansion up in Walnut Creek,” Coker jokingly said with a laugh.

“On a serious note, I mean, come on... Nick’s making very good money,” he continued. “He could buy any car or any house he wants in that valley.”

Though the UFC parent company, Zuffa, recently purchased Strikeforce, Coker insists that it will be business as usual for the company. Not only in terms of the fights and events they will be putting on, but also in how they will be finding, developing, promoting, and paying their talent.

“The promoter can only request and the fighter has to agree,” Coker explained, regarding Diaz’s insistence that he is the most “Overworked, overtrained, underpaid fighter.”

“We just ask. They respond. It’s not me making him come fight.”

With the Zuffa organization now owning essentially every major mixed martial arts company, Diaz and other fighters including Paul Daley, may feel like they are running out of options. But Coker doesn’t think that Diaz is upset enough to leave the company.

“I’m sure he likes to compete and likes to make a living,” Coker concluded.

Whether Diaz believes he is underpaid or not seems to vary from day-to-day, or even minute-to-minute, but one thing is for sure—Dana White and the decision-makers at Zuffa do not take this type of talk lightly.