At UFC 244, Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal will compete for the UFC’s “baddest motherf**ker” title — shortened to the BMF title. Most fans seem to be extremely excited for this fight, but that excitement is not shared by UFC pioneer Tank Abbott.
Abbott sees one glaring problem with this BMF title business: In his eyes, neither Diaz nor Masvidal is all that bad.
“Oh, I think it’s pretty funny actually,” the heavyweight legend said of Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal on Submission Radio. “I mean, neither one of those guys would qualify as a bad guy in my eyes. I mean, I could throw it out there, transplants and all, I’ll fight the winner of that fight.
“Obviously their size and the whole makeup of it. Like I said, it’s just not something that even comes close to being something that I’d be interested in. I definitely would not think either one of those guys are the baddest whatever in the world. Far from it.”
When asked whether he could beat Diaz and Masvidal, the 54-year-old responded:
“Oh, they can make me a burrito.”
Shortly after these digs at Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal, Abbott took a shot at another modern UFC star in Conor McGregor. He says he took issue with McGregor’s infamous altercation with an older man at a bar.
“I’m not really into the lawn jockeys of the world fighting. You know, when I fought, it was who were the toughest guys around? And they got in there and fought, but you didn’t need to hide behind a weight class or anything like that,” Abbott said of McGregor. “And so Conor – actually, Floyd Mayweather kind of actually put him on the map. But yeah, he’s done his thing, he’s made his money. I didn’t really have a thought about him or opinion, but I did see the punch that he did to the poor old guy and I wasn’t on board with that. All the other stuff, all his shenanigans is whatever, who cares? Boys being boys. But to actually… it was basically a sucker punch in my eyes to that old poor guy. I mean, what are you doing when that goes down? So, I can tell you just from an outsider looking in, he’s not somebody that I would be a fan of.”
What do you think of Abbott’s comments on Nate Diaz, Jorge Masvidal and Conor McGregor?
This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 9/27/2019.