Nate Diaz and Mike Perry are coming back to mixed martial arts to face each other in a five-round welterweight scrap as a part of the Rousey-Carano show on Netflix at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on May 16.
As of early this afternoon, BetOnline had Perry (14-8 MMA, 7-8 UFC) installed as a -260 favorite, leaving Diaz as a +200 underdog.
“Glad to be back in action. It’s time,” Diaz said in a press release. “Don’t forget where this all came from. I got plans on doing a lot more in the next 10 years, no matter where it is. Time to set the bar again, so get ready for a new takeover again and again until the end of time.”
Diaz (21-13 MMA, 16-11 UFC) will turn 41 next month and when he steps into the cage in May, it’ll have been 1,283 days since his last MMA fight. It’ll be 1,801 days since Perry exited the Octagon for the final time.
Diaz defeated Tony Ferguson via fourth-round submission (guillotine choke) at UFC 279 on Sept. 10 of 2022 to close out his UFC contract. He owns a 5-6 record in 11 bouts contested in the welterweight loop, beating the likes of Conor McGregor, Anthony Pettis, Marcus Davis and Rory Markham.
In addition to the victories over McGregor, Pettis and Ferguson, Diaz’s best career wins include scalps over Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, Jim Miller, Gray Maynard (twice if you count an exhibition match in the semifinals of Season 5 of The Ultimate Fighter), Takanori Gomi, Melvin Guillard and Michael Johnson.
Since leaving the UFC, Diaz has split a pair of boxing matches vs. Jake Paul and Jorge Masvidal. He lost a unanimous decision vs. Paul and beat Masvidal via majority decision.
The 34-year-old Perry went 1-4 in his last five UFC bouts, dropping a UD to Daniel Rodriguez on April 10 of 2021 in his final fight for the promotion. He owns notable MMA wins over Jake Ellenberger, Paul Felder, Danny Roberts and Alex Oliveira.
‘Platinum’ has shined since leaving the UFC and transitioning to bare-knuckle boxing under the BKFC promotion. He’s posted a 6-0 record with four straight knockout wins.
Perry defeated Julian Lane, Michael ‘Venom’ Page and Luke Rockhold in his first three BKFC appearances. Next, he took on Eddie Alvarez, the former UFC lightweight champion.
Similar to the BMF belt (Baddest MF’er) created by the UFC for the Diaz-Masvidal bout at MSG in NYC to headline UFC 244, BKFC dubbed Perry-Alvarez for the symbolic King of Violence championship. Perry won by TKO (corner stoppage) over Alvarez in the BKFC 56 main event in Salt Lake City.
Since then, Perry has added wins over Thiago Alves and Jeremy Stephens at BKFC Knucklemania IV and BKFC 82, respectively. He ventured out of BKFC once to face Paul in a boxing match, losing via sixth-round TKO on July 20 of 2024.
In a heavyweight bout that was added to the card last week, former UFC heavyweight kingpin Francis Ngannou is a -1200 ‘chalk’ vs. Philipe Lins, who is a +800 underdog at BetOnline.
Most books have Rousey as a -500 favorite vs. Carano, who is a +375 underdog.
According to MMA insider Ariel Helwani, the UFC was interested in bringing Diaz back in 2026. That was presumably to fight McGregor.
Another MMA insider, Luke Thomas, adds that Diaz signing to fight Perry “closes the door on a UFC return completely.”
If that proves to be true, we probably won’t be getting Diaz-McGregor III anytime soon. I say that because McGregor has two fights left on his UFC contract.
I still have my doubts that we’ll ever see McGregor fight again. If we do, it’ll be a long time before he fights twice and then books a third fight against Diaz, who would presumably be in his mid-40s by then.
Regardless of the fact that Diaz and McGregor are well past their primes, the build-up and press conferences for a third scrap would be must-see entertainment like it was the two previous times. With that in mind, it would be another big fight (like Jon Jones-Tom Aspinall, Jones-Ngannou, Jones-Alex Pereira and, at least for now, Ilia Topuria-Islam Makhachev) that the UFC has failed to make here recently under its new ownership group.