There was no love lost between two fighters and forgiveness for another Wednesday at the UFC 141 pre-fight press conference in Las Vegas.
While co-headliners for the year-end show at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem, answered questions about their important clash in Friday’s main event, the real fireworks came at the end, when co-main event competitors Nate Diaz and Donald Cerrone squared off on stage for pictures.
Diaz, whose reputation for standoffishness is almost as big as his brother Nick’s, came in close with his fist in Cerrone’s face while the latter stood unthreateningly with his arms at his side. Then, unprovoked, Diaz flicked Cerrone’s trademark cowboy hat off his head and shoved him. UFC president Dana White intervened, though Cerrone merely backpedalled.
“He was trying to tip his hat into my face and I’m no punk who will take that,” Diaz said in a press release. “He was mumbling some stupid crap about me needing to bring it. He don’t even believe what he’s saying. He’s trying to find confidence from somewhere. I will knock something else off his head Friday.”
According to the UFC, Cerrone’s hat was worth $1,000. Although Cerrone smiled at Diaz, it appeared he was not amused.
“I’m not getting paid to fight today. I get paid on Friday when it counts,” Cerrone said. “Let’s see if he’s brave enough to swat my hat off on Friday. Let’s see if he even comes close. Today, I acted like a professional. Friday, I’m gonna make him pay.”
The tension between the two fighters had risen before, Cerrone described at Tuesday’s fighter workouts for the media, when Cerrone approached Diaz to shake his hand at the UFC 137 open workouts in October, and Diaz replied by slapping his hand away.
“I just walked the other way; I came here to fight,” Diaz said.
After Cerrone defeated Dennis Siver at the event, he was later offered the fight against Diaz, who was in Las Vegas with his brother facing B.J. Penn. (After defeating Penn, Nick generated his own animosity by infamously calling out welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.)
Both UFC 141 co-main event competitors have been known to talk trash in the past, but Cerrone said Wednesday he had no ill intentions about with his opponent. He said he had never met Diaz and just wanted to make acquaintances; he didn’t realize that Diaz doesn’t like to get comfortable with another fighter that he might be entering the cage against.
“I didn’t understand it at first, but if that’s his way of approaching it like, ‘I don’t want to be friends with anybody,'” Cerrone said. “Hate me, love me, I don’t care. We’re fighting.”
Meanwhile, in a showing of "holiday-like" good will, White was joined after the press conference by a remorseful Miguel Torres, who was recently released by the UFC for an insensitive tweet poking fun at rape victims, and announced he was returning to the organization, according to several media outlets. White said Torres took rape sensitivity classes and did volunteer work at rape crisis centres on his own accord in his hometown of Chicago.
“He handled his business like a man,” White said.
The tweet posted by Torres was a quote from the television show "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,", but White said at the time it didn’t matter and he should have known better.
Earlier, there were some minor boastful statements by Lesnar (5-2) and Overeem (35-11-1), though not rising to anywhere near the same level of animosity as Diaz-Cerrone.
When Lesnar, a former UFC heavyweight champion, was asked about how he felt being the underdog against a man making his UFC debut, he said he was, "the underdog with a big f—ing bite, alright."
On the other hand, Overeem, the former Strikeforce title-holder who is on an 11-fight unbeaten run in promotions in the U.S., Japan and his native Netherlands, thought there was good reason that he was the favourite.
"I’ve been cleaning house overseas," Overeem said. "And I have a lot of experience … when I was 19 I had the amount of fights that Brock has now."
(Overeem was almost correct — he had his sixth professional fight three days after his 20th birthday.)
The winner of the fight becomes the No. 1 contender to the UFC heavyweight title, currently held by Junior Dos Santos.
