Red Mosquito

Nate Diaz's boxing coach: Conor McGregor is on steroids
By Andreas Hale
29 February, 2016 7:40 PM
Cagewriter

When Nate Diaz suggested that the entire UFC — including Conor McGregor — was on steroids during the UFC 196 press conference last week, many shrugged it off as Nate Diaz being Nate Diaz and saying things that don’t carry much weight. However, he’s not the only person who believes that rampant steroid use is a problem in the UFC. As a matter of fact, Diaz’s boxing coach, Richard Perez, pinpoints McGregor as a steroid user.

Perez made the accusation during his interview on the “Submission Radio” podcast and didn’t hold back.
“Oh I sure do believe that, heck yeah. Some guys, they get busted — and to be honest with you, I know McGregor has got to be on some kind of steroids," Perez said when asked whether Diaz’s comments had any validity to them. "He’s pretty big, and then all of a sudden [he’s] jumping to 170? Yeah there’s no way, cause I mean, he was supposed to be fighting at 155."

Perez has an issue with the fact that McGregor was preparing for a fight at lightweight but with two weeks to go he is able to take on a welterweight. It should be noted that McGregor has long been considered a “big” featherweight and his struggles to make the 145-pound weight limit have been well documented. But that doesn’t matter much to Perez, who believes that McGregor’s guilt was shown as soon as he responded to Diaz’s claims.

“When Nathan mentioned it to him, he got defensive, he got angry," he said. "If somebody would have told me that I was fighting and [taking] steroids, I would laugh and say, 'yeah give me some more steroids, heck yeah!' But he got defensive and mad [saying] ‘I’m not on steroids, I’m not on steroids!’ Just his actions and the way he talked, there’s something behind that."

Perez went on to say that McGregor may have had problems making the 155-pound weight limit for his fight with Rafael dos Anjos because he was likely doing something “shady” that caused his weight to jump.

“All I know is that he was supposed to fight at 155, and for some reason I don’t think he would have made the weight, because he was trying to go to 165 and then he went to 170," Perez said. "You would think he had two more weeks to go, he would be close to 155 and stay on that or go to 160. But he didn’t, he jumped to 170. So that’s kinda shady right there.”

This contradicts the reports that Diaz having a short camp and would likely struggle to make the 155-pound limit is the reason why the fight ended up at 170.

Regardless of the speculations on whether McGregor uses PEDs, the fight will go on. And Perez feels that the Irishman will be in for a big surprise come March 5. "McGregor is a good striker," Perez said when asked about McGregor’s vaunted striking that has seen him record five straight knockouts, including the 13-second stoppage of Jose Aldo in December. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he's not, but Nathan's better. I mean, when Nathan's on his gameplan he'll make him look silly."

**We have some additional details on the UR Fight event that is set for March 20th in Phoenix, Arizona at The Celebrity Theatre. The promotion has not commented publicly about the status of Ken Shamrock, who did receive a 30-day medical suspension from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and that would run through March 21st. We can confirm that Dan Severn is scheduled to fight on the show, along with Michael Bisping and Chael Sonnen in a grappling bout, a professional wrestling match between Rey Mysterio and Kurt Angle and a boxing fight between Roy Jones Jr. and one of four finalists. The commission did make changes to the contest for a fan to fight Jones Jr. and require that the winner has a certain level of professional fighting experience, which all of the finalists do. The promotion is also in the process of finalizing their announce team, which they are planning to have a three-person booth for. The event will be streamed live at URfight.tv and is scheduled to have seven undercard bouts as well. There are also some other notable names that UR Fight is negotiating with and could be added to the card.

**A representative for Dhafir “Dada 5000” Harris has released a statement that Harris has been released from hospital after close to two-weeks. Harris was hospitalized immediately following his loss to Kimbo Slice at Bellator 149 on February 19th. Harris had a crash diet to get down to the 265 pound heavyweight limit and led to cardiac issues and renal failure after the fight.

**The Bellator 151 weigh-ins take place later today for Friday night’s show in Thackerville, Oklahoma and airing on Spike TV. Below are the main card fights for the show:
*Joe Warren vs. Darrion Caldwell
*Fernando Gonzalez vs. Gilbert Smith
*Goiti Yamauchi vs. Bubba Jenkins
*Sirwan Kakai vs. Joe Taimanglo

**TMZ has footage of Nick Diaz telling his brother, Nate, that if Conor McGregor lays a hand on him during yesterday’s stare down that “it’s on”.

**Tonight is the Bellator 151 event from Thackerville, Oklahoma and airing on Spike TV at 9pm Eastern with the following main card lineup:
*Joe Warren vs. Darion Caldwell
*Fernando Gonzalez vs. Gilbert Smith
*Goiti Yamauchi vs. Bubba Jenkins
*Sirwan Kakai vs. Joe Taimanglo

**The Ottawa Citizen confirmed today that the UFC will be hosting a Fight Night event in the city on Saturday June 18th at a venue to be announced. This will be the UFC’s first card of the year in Canada and the first time they have ever run the city of Ottawa. The last time the UFC held a Canadian event was last August in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is expected that the event will be formally announced at today’s Unstoppable press conference.

**RFA has a card tonight at 10pm Eastern from Prior Lake, Minnesota and is headlined by former UFC fighter Chico Camus and Matt Brown.

**Titan FC also has a card tonight with three title fights from Ridgefield, Washington. Anderson dos Santos and Ricky Simon will fight for the vacant heavyweight title, Andre Harrison defends the featherweight title against Steven Siler and Tim Elliott and Pedro Nobre are fighting for the flyweight title on the show. The card also features former UFC and Strikeforce fighter Pat Healy against Muhsin Corbbrey. The Titan FC card airs at 8pm Eastern on UFC Fight Pass.

**Below is the third episode of this week’s UFC Embedded series:

**Tonight is the UFC 196 pay-per-view from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The buys for this show will be very telling and display what kind of an audience Holly Holm can bring to compliment the numbers that this show will already be doing because of Conor McGregor. This show could be bigger than UFC 189 (McGregor vs. Chad Mendes) but may not beat UFC 194 (McGregor vs. Jose Aldo and Luke Rockhold vs. Chris Weidman). If enough of the Ronda Rousey audience that purchased UFC 193 is drawn to Holm than this show could do well and that’s why this is a difficult show to predict because Holm is an unknown but has got a lot of the attention since the Rousey win. Regardless, this is going to be one of the big shows of the year for the UFC and figures to be a very solid year on pay-per-view if everything comes together (Cormier vs. Jones will be big, UFC 200 will be big, the possibility of three Conor McGregor fights on PPV and the chance that Ronda Rousey returns this year).

**Below is the complete card for tonight’s show. There will be a live pre-show on Fight Network at 7pm Eastern and then a live post-show immediately after the card (which will include the UFC 196 post-fight press conference).

MAIN CARD (10pm ET on pay-per-view)
*Conor McGregor (168) vs. Nate Diaz (169)
*Holly Holm (134.5) vs. Miesha Tate (135) for the women’s bantamweight title
*Ilir Latifi (205) vs. Gian Villante (205)
*Tom Lawlor (204.5) vs. Corey Anderson (204)
*Amanda Nunes (136) vs. Valentina Shevchenko (134)

PRELIMINARY CARD (8pm ET on FS 1 and TSN2 in Canada)
*Brandon Thatch (170) vs. Siyar Bahadurzada (170)
*Nordine Taleb (170) vs. Erick Silva (170)
*Vitor Miranda (185.5) vs. Marcelo Guimares (185.5)
*Chas Skelly (145.5) vs. Darren Elkins (145.5)

FIGHT PASS CARD (6:30pm Eastern)
*Diego Sanchez (156) vs. Jim Miller (155.5)
*Justin Salas (156) vs. Jason Saggo (155.5)
*Julian Erosa (144.5) vs. Teruto Ishihara (146)

**There were lots of announcements at the UFC’s Unstoppable press conference from Friday afternoon in Las Vegas. They announced all the main fights leading up to UFC 200 in July with all of the fighters flown in for the press conference. It was undeniable what effect the current business trends of MMA have had on these main event fighters. They all know what sells and the success that Conor McGregor has had, the success that Bellator has had and that grudges sell well. This press conference was 40 minutes of fighters cutting promos on one another, playing to the crowd and eventually led to a “Jerry” chant in the vein of the Jerry Springer Show. It’s always been said that if you have a million Conor McGregors, it wouldn’t mean as much – and no one at this presser was at the level of McGregor in terms of speaking, how quick McGregor is on his feet and delivery – but they all are trying to study from that playbook and there will be varying degrees of success. Below are the fights that are all official for the next number of months:
*UFC 197 (April 23rd in Las Vegas): Daniel Cormier vs. Jon Jones for the light heavyweight title; Demetrious Johnson vs. Henry Cejudo for the flyweight title
*UFC 198 (May 14th in Curitiba, Brazil): Fabricio Werdum vs. Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title; Vitor Belfort vs. Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza
*UFC 199 (June 4th at The Forum in L.A.): Luke Rockhold vs. Chris Weidman for the middleweight title; Dominick Cruz vs. Urijah Faber for the bantamweight title
*UFC Fight Pass card (Thursday July 7th during International Fight Week)
*TUF Finale (Friday July 8th in Las Vegas): Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Claudia Gadelha for the women’s strawweight title
*UFC 200 (July 9th at the new Las Vegas Arena) – No fights announced yet

**The UFC also announced a Fight Night event for Saturday May 29th but didn’t have a city, venue or main event to announce yet.

**The UFC’s Fight Night event in Ottawa, Ontario on Saturday June 18th will be headlined by Rory MacDonald vs. Stephen Thompson, which is an incredible fight at welterweight.

**We reported the news on Friday evening that Ken Shamrock is officially off of the UR Fight event on March 20th in Phoenix, Arizona. David “Tank” Abbott will be taking Shamrock’s spot on the card and will fight Dan Severn. This is a rematch from Ultimate Ultimate 1995 where Severn won by decision after 18:00 of fighting. Abbott is 50 years old and last fought in 2013. Severn is coming out of retirement and will be his first pro fight since 2012.

**The Bellator 151 card took place on Friday night from Thackerville, Oklahoma and Darrion Caldwell was the star of the show with the biggest performance of his MMA career. Caldwell dominated former two-division champion Joe Warren and choked him out cold after taking Warren’s back. Caldwell is an incredible wrestler, who was a national champion and should be fighting for the Bellator bantamweight title next with this performance. Below are the main card results:
*Joe Taimanglo def. Sirwan Kakai by unanimous decision (29-28 all)
*Bubba Jenkins def. Goiti Yamauchi by unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-27)
*Fernando Gonzalez def. Gilbert Smith by split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28)
*Darrion Caldwell def. Joe Warren by technical submission from a rear-naked choke at 3:23 of Round 1

I think they should have a Tate Holm Rousey three way match at the next ppv.

LOL.

Haha. Fuck yeah.

Miesha Tate


Be honest... You'd hit that, wouldn't you?

She'd hit you back. And probably harder than you hit her.

An obvious response, Kaius, but I'm talking about sexual intercourse.

No!? Really?! Huh. That went right over my head!

I don't watch mma really but I see everything is alway s a huge upset. They wanna build the fighter up before he's actually earned it and a loss inevitably happens. Wasn't McGregor supposed to be God?

Bammer wrote:Miesha Tate


Be honest... You'd hit that, wouldn't you?

Her face is somehow worse than Rouseys.

verb_to_trust wrote:I don't watch mma really but I see everything is alway s a huge upset. They wanna build the fighter up before he's actually earned it and a loss inevitably happens. Wasn't McGregor supposed to be God?

He's only God at 155lbs.

Rogan had the line of the night: Connor should probably stay off the internet for a couple of days.

Bammer wrote:Miesha Tate


Be honest... You'd hit that, wouldn't you?

What would have happened if the tate Holme fight had been a draw?

tommymtcom wrote:What would have happened if the tate Holme fight had been a draw?

No draws per se in MMA, it would have just gone to the judges scores. Holm probably would have won.

Stickman wrote:

tommymtcom wrote:What would have happened if the tate Holme fight had been a draw?

No draws per se in MMA, it would have just gone to the judges scores. Holm probably would have won.

I mean what if the judges scores had been even?

tommymtcom wrote:

Stickman wrote:

tommymtcom wrote:What would have happened if the tate Holme fight had been a draw?

No draws per se in MMA, it would have just gone to the judges scores. Holm probably would have won.

I mean what if the judges scores had been even?

Well, there's different types of draws:

Unanimous Draw - When all three judges score the contest a draw
Majority Draw - When two judges score the contest a draw
Split Draw - When all three judges score differently

Doesn't really happen much in championship fights but if it did, Holm still retains the belt.