Nate Diaz got himself into some hot water with the UFC last week after using a disparaging term in a tweet about Bryan Caraway. The UFC fined and suspended Diaz for the remark, which is usually defined as a homophobic slur. I only say “usually” because Nate’s manager Mike Kogan was a guest on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani today, and stated that he and Diaz doesn’t have any remorse for saying it and defending it because that’s not the way it was intended (via MMA Fighting):
“Nate doesn’t feel remorse for what he said,” Kogan told host Ariel Helwani.”I don’t feel remorse for what he said. I don’t feel remorse for defending what he said or elaborating on what he said. Because it was not a homophobic statement. It was not intended to offend homosexuals. We weren’t even talking about homosexuals. One can debate the multiple uses of this term. We can sit here and debate in the English language, there’s a lot of words that mean a lot of different things, but whatever. As it is, it wasn’t intended to be used the way people tried to twist the way it was being used. So therefore, what does he have to feel bad about? The fact that [Caraway] shouldn’t gloat over other person’s issues and try to kiss ass to make a point?
“Did anybody ask Bryan Caraway about his stance on marijuana? No,” continued. “Nobody asked Bryan Caraway anything. They just gave him the damn money because he was chasing after Dana all over Twitter begging for the g——n bonus. Just take your money and go away.”
He even went a step further by saying that neither of them would be apologizing for it because that would be an admission that they were intentionally trying to offend a community that the comment wasn’t targeted at:
“If we would have made a homophobic statement, or a statement that was clearly intended to insult homosexuals, that’s one thing,” he said. “You come out and say, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m really sorry it hurt people. We didn’t mean to do that.’ But to me, and this is just my philosophy, and I’m sure it’s going to be disagreed with by many people. This is how I think, and how Nate thinks. The mere fact that there is a protocol to deal with these crisis situation implies its lack of sincerity.”
This is similar to a situation back in 2010 where Joe Rogan used a variation of the same term when describing an MMA journalist after a disagreement on terminology between the two. Rogan’s description of his intent was pretty much exactly the same as Kogan’s position. The difference is that Rogan actually apologized, while Kogan and Diaz are taking a hard line on the issue.
Kogan also stated that Diaz would indeed likely be going up to 170 pounds when he is cleared to compete once again, which is something Diaz stated before his loss to Josh Thomson at UFC on Fox 7.
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