Nate Diaz got lumped up by Mike Perry.
On Saturday, Diaz suffered the third stoppage loss of his MMA career when his corner called off the bout after the second round. It had been a tough fight for Diaz before that as Perry batter him around the cage, opening multiple cuts and just generally beating him up. As a result, Diaz received a 180-day suspension from the California Athletic Commission, and veteran cornerman Jacob “Stitch” Duran, who was working on Diaz, gave his up-close account of the carnage.
“He ended up with 15 staples, 20 stitches all together,” Duran told MMA Junkie. “He was beat up. He was too strong for him. I always look at it as a judge, and at that point, he was getting his ass whooped. Mike was just too strong, too aggressive and he was working him. Then, Nate broke his finger … He said, ‘I couldn’t do nothing.’ The cuts were so big here, it kept pulsating. It kept going and then his nose kept bleeding. It was the sign of maybe a broken nose. I told Nate, ‘I’m going to have the doctor stop the fight, man.’ I said, ‘It’s too much blood and you keep bleeding.’ The referee said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. He’s not going out.’”
As one might expect, the crowd in attendance did not love the stoppage, booing the decision to end the bout without more finality. But Diaz took the loss in stride, and Duran says he even thanked him for the call.
“Nate thanked me,” Duran said. “He said, ‘Thanks.’ I said, ‘Of course.’ I was there to take care of him. That was a proper move. The thing about it is he said he couldn’t see. That’s always No. 1. It wasn’t a hard decision to make. … He had blood everywhere. So it wasn’t that hard of a decision to make. My job is to protect the fighter. That’s exactly what I did with Nate. At the end, when we were saying goodbye, he gives me a hug, ‘I love you.’ His dad was there. He thanked me. So of course I did the right thing. No question about it.”
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