Diaz Brothers Best Moments: Top 10 Nick and Nate Diaz Highlights

UFC 47, April 2, 2004, Mandalay Bay Events Center, Las Vegas. Nick Diaz was 20 years old and Robbie Lawler was the young power puncher everyone expected to run through him. Diaz talked to him, walked him down and knocked him out with a punch at 1:31 of the second round. It won him Knockout of the Night.

That was the first time a national audience saw the Diaz style in full: the taunting, the chin, the volume and the complete refusal to respect a dangerous man. Lawler went on to become a UFC welterweight champion. Diaz got him first.

The two met again 17 years later at UFC 266 on September 25, 2021, in a five-round middleweight fight that Lawler won by third-round stoppage. It was Nick's first bout in six years, and the fact that it happened at all is a story on its own.

Pride 33: The Second Coming, February 24, 2007, Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas. Takanori Gomi was the Pride lightweight champion and the best 155-pounder on earth. Diaz took a beating early, bled all over the ring, kept walking forward and then, at 1:46 of the second round, locked up a gogoplata, a shin-across-the-throat choke almost nobody had finished a real fight with. Gomi tapped.

The Nevada commission later overturned the result to a no contest after Diaz tested positive for marijuana, which was reported on April 10, 2007. The record says no contest. Everybody who watched it knows what happened in the ring, and it is still the most famous submission of Nick's career.

Strikeforce: Nashville, April 17, 2010, Bridgestone Arena, live on CBS. Jake Shields had just outpointed Dan Henderson over five rounds to keep the Strikeforce middleweight title and was giving his post-fight interview when Jason "Mayhem" Miller walked into the cage asking for a rematch. Shields shoved him, the corner swarmed, and within seconds Nick Diaz, the Strikeforce welterweight champion at the time, and Nate Diaz were throwing punches and kicks at Miller on network television. CBS cut to commercial.

It was a disaster for the sport's image on the one night it had a broadcast network audience, and Shields apologized afterward. It was also the purest expression of what the Diaz brothers are: a team from Stockton that will fight anyone who touches one of their own, cameras or not.

Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley, April 9, 2011, Valley View Casino Center, San Diego. This was the first full Strikeforce card after Zuffa bought the company, and Nick put on the best round of his life defending the welterweight title. Paul Daley, one of the hardest hitters in the division, dropped him with a left hook with just over a minute left in the first. Diaz got up, put Daley down and finished him with elbows, punches and hammerfists at 4:57 of round one.

Three seconds from the bell. The fight gets forgotten because it happened outside the UFC, but as a single round of violence it stands with anything Nick ever did. It was also his last Strikeforce fight before the move back to the UFC that produced the next entry.

UFC 141, December 30, 2011, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas. Donald Cerrone came in on a six-fight winning streak. At the Thursday weigh-in Nate knocked the cowboy hat off his head and shoved him, and when Cerrone tried to wish him luck before the fight, Diaz slapped his hand away. Between the second and third rounds he flipped Cerrone off from across the cage.

Then he beat him up. Diaz won a unanimous decision, snapped the streak and took home a $75,000 Fight of the Night check along with Cerrone. The hat moment is the one that gets replayed, but the fight itself was Nate's best lightweight performance: three rounds of straight punches, slaps and a pace Cerrone could not match.

UFC 137, October 29, 2011, Mandalay Bay Events Center, Las Vegas. Nick got BJ Penn in the main event and beat him up over three rounds, 29-28, 29-28 and 29-27, in a fight that paid both men $75,000 for Fight of the Night and had Penn talking retirement in the cage: "This is the last time you'll see me in here."

Then Nick grabbed the mic and gave the best callout of the era: "I don't think Georges is hurt, I think he's scared." St-Pierre took it personally. The two fought at UFC 158 on March 16, 2013 in Montreal, where GSP won a five-round decision, but the press conference the day before, with Nick asking Georges how many times he had a gun to his head, is the part people remember.

UFC on Fox 17, December 19, 2015, Amway Center, Orlando. Nate was on the outside of the title picture when he took on Michael Johnson, one of the fastest lightweights in the division. He outboxed him for three rounds, won a unanimous decision and then delivered a callout of Conor McGregor to Joe Rogan on network television that Fox had to bleep most of.

The clean version was that if McGregor wanted the real fight, it was right there. It was wild, profane and completely sincere, and it set up the biggest fight of either brother's life less than three months later. Without this callout there is no UFC 196.

UFC 279, September 10, 2022, T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. The last fight on Nate's UFC contract was supposed to be Khamzat Chimaev, until Chimaev missed weight by 7.5 pounds and the card was reshuffled the day before. Diaz got Tony Ferguson in the main event instead and submitted him with a guillotine at 2:52 of the fourth round. It earned a $50,000 Performance of the Night bonus.

It was the perfect exit. Fifteen years in the company, a win over a former interim champion in the main event, a Stockton crowd in Vegas and a walk out the door on his own terms. He went to boxing next, dropping a decision to Jake Paul in Dallas on August 5, 2023 after a fifth-round knockdown, but UFC 279 is the one that counts.

UFC 183, January 31, 2015, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas. Nick came back from a two-year layoff to fight Anderson Silva, the greatest middleweight ever, in Silva's own comeback. Inside the first minute Diaz lay flat on the canvas as if he had been knocked out and waved Silva in. The referee warned him for taunting. In the fifth round he did the Ali shuffle.

Silva won the decision, 50-45, 50-45 and 49-46. Then the whole thing was wiped out: Silva tested positive for steroid metabolites before the fight and for benzodiazepines after it, got a year's suspension and a $380,000 fine, and the result was changed to a no contest. Diaz tested positive for marijuana, his third failure, and was initially suspended five years and fined $165,000 before an appeal cut it to 18 months and $100,000. The record is a mess. The image of Nick lying on his back in front of Anderson Silva is immortal.

UFC 196, March 5, 2016, MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas. Rafael dos Anjos broke his foot on February 23 and pulled out of his lightweight title defense against McGregor. Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar passed. Nate took the fight at welterweight on 11 days' notice, ate the featherweight champion's left hand for a round, then cracked McGregor with a one-two in the second, took him down and choked him out with a rear-naked choke at 4:12.

The post-fight line, bleeped on the broadcast, was "I'm not surprised." The event did 1,317,000 pay-per-view buys, and the rematch at UFC 202 on August 20, 2016 did an estimated 1,650,000, with McGregor taking a majority decision, 48-47, 48-47 and 47-47, in a five-round war.

A kid from Stockton who had not been in a title conversation in years walked into Las Vegas and strangled the biggest star in the history of the sport. No Diaz moment comes close, and in this sport very few moments by anyone do.