After going 1-1 in a two fight series against Conor McGregor, UFC mega-star Nate Diaz took two years off from prize fighting.
Now though, Diaz has finally booked his return to the Octagon, and will face off with Dustin Poirier in the UFC 230 co-main event.
The Los Angeles Times broke the news on Thursday evening:
Nate Diaz will return to the UFC octagon after more than a two-year absence Nov. 3 at Madison Square Garden for an expected firefight of a stand-up bout against destructive puncher Dustin Poirier, the Los Angeles Times learned Thursday.
The lightweight bout will serve as the co-main event at UFC 230.
Stockton’s Diaz (20-11) has participated in the main event of two of the most lucrative UFC pay-per-view cards in history, first by taking a March 2016 fight against Conor McGregor on less than two weeks’ notice to submit him in the second round.
Then, after Diaz and his fighter brother, Nick, engaged McGregor in a bottle-and-can throwing exchange during a pre-fight news conference, he lost to McGregor by decision in one of the most thrilling bouts in the organization’s history.
The asterisk to that was that the jujitsu-schooled, boxing-trained Diaz basked in the riches of the pay-per-view dollars, opting to remain sidelined until another fight capable of generating a massive purse emerged.
He balked at participating in Saturday’s UFC 227 at Staples Center against former two-division champion Georges St-Pierre, with a representative saying Diaz felt that St-Pierre was his brother’s rival, and then St-Pierre fell ill.
Now, Diaz, 33, returns on the third version of an MSG November card that has also performed well in pay-per-view sales dating to McGregor’s 2016 knockout of Eddie Alvarez to win the lightweight belt and last year’s show headlined by St-Pierre’s comeback and stoppage of then-middleweight champion Michael Bisping.
Louisiana’s Poirier (24-5) has risen to No. 3 in the UFC lightweight rankings by winning eight of his last 10 bouts. One was a no-contest last year that Poirier answered Saturday by knocking out Alvarez in the second round of the UFC Fight Night event in Calgary.
Poirier has won three fight-of-the-night bonuses and a performance-of-the-night bonus in his last four fights, which have included knockouts of hyped prospect Justin Gaethje and former lightweight champion Anthony Pettis.
The card will also include a rematch between former middleweight champions Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold.
In December 2015, Rockhold (16-4) defeated New York’s Weidman (14-3) by fourth-round technical knockout to capture the middleweight belt in Las Vegas.
