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“It’s Pointless to Fight at 165”- Dana White Shuts Down Nate Diaz’s Weight Class Argument

Published 10/20/2020, 11:44 AM EDT

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Dana White has gone off royally over fighters asking about a 165-pound weight division. The leader of that movement has been Nate Diaz, who has long been advocating to get a fight in the never-seen-before weight class. Dana White emphasized his dislike of the idea to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, saying the UFC will never have a 165-pound division while he is in the company.

“Nate’s been saying that forever, and it’s not going to happen. It’s never going to happen here. There’s no point in doing a fight at 165. What does it mean? If we don’t have a division for it, why would we do a fight at 165? It makes no sense. Maybe it’ll happen somewhere, but it’s never going to happen here. Not while I’m here, anyway.”

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He further questioned Diaz’s hesitation to fight in either 155 or 170, pointing to the talent at 170 as a reason.

Why does Diaz wanna fight at 65, why can’t he fight at 70? If you don’t like making 55 then why not fight at 70? You know why he doesn’t wanna fight at 70? You know why q lot of these guys wouldn’t fight at 70? I’ll tell you why. Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Gilbert Burns, Jorge Masvidal, Leon Edwards. That’s why.”

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Dana White ends the argument on the 165-pound division

This division really doesn’t make sense. It is 10 pounds over lightweight and just 5 pounds under Welterweight. Why make a division where the weight difference to the next two weight classes is barely anything? A division like this would encourage weight class ambiguity, breaking the continuity of ranked fights in each weight class.

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A 165 division existed for fighters who are trying to make a name for themselves in marquee fights. As Dana said, not everyone wants to face a Kamaru Usman or a Khabib Nurmagomedov to become champions. A 165-pound division alleviated that problem temporarily before we see other champs trying to get in that division as well. It is confusing and wholly unnecessary.

It doesn’t look like Nate will get his desired 165-pound fight. At this point, fans just hope we see him in the Octagon once again, as a year has passed since he last fought.

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Written by:

Ishaan Bhattacharya

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Ishaan Bhattacharya is an NBA, NCAA Basketball, and Combat Sports writer at EssentiallySports. Currently, Ishaan is pursuing a Post Graduate Degree in Journalism from Xavier's Institute of Communication. Previously, Ishaan has written for The Indian Express, The Quint, Sportskeeda, and WrestleClub.
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