In a few short weeks, on the main card of the stacked UFC 211, Jorge Masvidal will take on streaking jiu jitsu specialist Demian Maia in what appears to be a welterweight number one contender fight. Yet while it would be near impossible to deny that the winner of this fight deserve the next shot at reigning champ Tyron Woodley, it’s also possible that they get skipped over, should MMA star Nick Diaz return to competition.

According to Masvidal, however, this would not exactly be fair. Diaz, after all, has not fought since his infamous 2015 no contest with Anderson Silva – which occurred at middleweight – and has not won since October 2011, when he out-gunned BJ Penn.

“That wouldn’t excite me at all if he skipped me,” Masvidal said on the latest episode of Submission Radio. “Because I can’t think of the last time that he fought at 170 and the last guy that he beat at 170. So in this game, for me, in my opinion, it should be, if you’re fighting and you’re winning, then praise and worship be to you and then you get this money. But if you just sit out on the sidelines or whatever, I don’t think I should get skipped by any man at this point. But that is a strong possibility. The UFC could just call me and be like, ‘hey, you gotta sit this out. Nick Diaz is fighting Woodley and you’ll get the winner of that’. That’s a possibility. I don’t have that much power over the UFC.”

Should Masvidal defeat Maia – as he has assured BJPenn.com he will do – he will move onto a four fight streak, having recently decisioned Ross Pearson, TKO’d Jake Ellenberger, and snuffed fan favorite Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone for one of the best knockouts of the year thus far.

Do you think a win over Demian Maia earns Jorge Masvidal a title shot?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/27/2017.