Nate Diaz forced Fox to cut away from fight with Benson Henderson
Were you watching the Benson Henderson vs. Nate Diaz UFC fight on Fox on Saturday night and wondering why the broadcast kept mysteriously cutting away to a shot of an empty octagon during the fight?
Well, it turns out that Diaz was trying to get under Henderson’s skin during the fight by using an obscene gesture several times.
Diaz has done this in previous fights too, thinking that it gives him a psychological advantage, which might work if he was in the third grade instead of fighting in UFC.
“My training partners got together and they all started doing stuff like that to me in the middle of sparring and I’d get angry,” Henderson said after the fight. “They helped control it and I did a pretty good job of being very focused and not letting that affect my emotional state in the middle of the fight.”
After the fight, which Henderson won by unanimous decision, was over, Diaz shook hands with him and raised Henderson’s hand in victory, so he’s not a total jerk. He’s just a guy who uses schoolyard tactics to try to unnerve his opponents.
Here’s a guess that Fox executives will ask UFC President Dana White to tell Diaz to cool it in any future televised bouts.
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