Glendale, AZ — The five-round fight featuring Nate Diaz and Leon Edwards at UFC 263 was, in a word, fun.
Now, can you imagine if Shane Burgos vs. Josh Emmett had been five rounds? What about Cub Swanson vs. Doo Ho Choi? Diego Sanchez vs. Gilbert Melendez? Chuck Liddell vs. Wanderlei Silva? You get the point. With Diaz vs. Edwards being a rousing success, we asked UFC president Dana White during Saturday’s post-fight press conference if we might see more of them. Non-title, non-main event five round fights.
“I guarantee everybody in this room has watched a bad-ass fight and said, ‘God, I wish this was five rounds.’ There’s been so many of these fights that I wish— we can’t keep doing that, we just can’t,” White responded.
When asked if he could cherry-pick the really exciting fights, White remained non-committal.
“Not cherry-pick; Diaz really wanted to do it. So we sat in that room that I talk about that I’ll be in on Tuesday, and we decided that we would do it. I don’t want to make a habit of it. Co-main, main event, if it’s a championship, and all main events are five rounds. But yeah, we can make those decisions sometimes. I’m not saying we will, but we can,” White said.
Cageside Press also asked what the possibility of a double Diaz card featuring both Nate and Nick. Nate said that he wants to fight in a couple of months and stay active, while his brother will be making his long-awaited return to active competition later this year as well. Hopefully.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what Nate wants to do after this. I don’t know. Anything is possible,” White said.
White was also asked if there was any possibility that he would help bring Japanese promotion RIZIN to America.
“I like [Nobuyuki] Sakakibara, I always did. Even when we were really hardcore competitors, he was a fun guy to compete with,” said White. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Not saying that I would, but I’m not saying that I wouldn’t either. At the time that we competed, when Pride and the UFC were both first coming up, it was just such a different time in the sport. I don’t know.”
Watch the full UFC 263 post-fight press conference with Dana White above.
