Nate Diaz fought out his UFC contract with a win against Tony Ferguson at UFC 279 earlier this month — and Bellator MMA have already opened a dialog with the Stockton star.
Bellator President Scott Coker let the news slip in an interview with the BBC, ahead of the promotion’s trip to Ireland this Friday.
“Well, we are definitely talking to him,” Coker revealed to BBC Sport. “We’ve reached out and I know he’s probably talking to everybody. He’s, I think, in a pretty good situation. I know he wants to fight Jake Paul. Jake Paul’s fighting, you know, against Anderson Silva on Showtime pay-per-view, which is our home network, so there’s some synergies here.”
Diaz (21-13) earned his first win since 2019 when he submitted Ferguson with a guillotine choke at UFC 279. As is well-known by now, Khamzat Chimaev was originally slotted to face Diaz, but a massive miss at the scales forced the promotion to shuffle the deck, bumping Ferguson to the main event.
Having battled the UFC for the better part of a year in order to fight out his deal, Diaz is set to test free agency with a lucrative fight on the horizon with Jake Paul — no doubt win or lose when it comes to Paul’s fight against Anderson Silva next month.
Bellator, however, allows that sort of moonlighting, and Coker appears happy to let Diaz juggle both endeavors.
“We’re just hoping that we could have some type of deal to at least have his MMA fights with Bellator,” Coker stated. “We are in dialogue.”
