In nearly every facet of human existence there’s always an urge to look for transcendence. We want to find that next guy who seems to transcend the boundaries of their given occupation and appeal to the masses. MMA fans are waiting for their own Mike Tyson to arrive and have been for a while. It’ll be the fighter that propels the sport into the mainstream ala Manny Pacquiao. Tyson was the last boxer to truly become a sports icon and has since become an absolutely ruthless parody of the man he used to be. ESPN writer Bill Simmons has crafted the “Tyson Zone” to describe any athlete, or person really, where you could describe some random piece of behavior that could be ascribed to an athlete and one would believe it without blinking at eye.
“Mike Tyson is breeding unicorns? I could see that” goes the thinking.
It’s a sad statement that one of boxing’s most dominant champions could fall this far but it shows how transcendent he was as a fighter. We can debate all we want about whether or not Jon Jones is the man to truly transcend MMA and become a sports icon all we want, or any other handful of fighters, but MMA’s Mike Tyson is truly in our mist. Nick Diaz is the sport’s version of Mike Tyson, but not in the transcendent way that people can admire and respect. It’s more in the latter, the certifiably nuts / bat-guano crazy description of Mike Tyson.
Diaz has entered the “Tyson Zone” … and we’re all better for it.
If there’s any fighter so completely off the wall and nuts enough that you can’t consider it an act it’s Diaz. It makes him that much more fun to watch because we know the taunting lunatic who never gets tired and wants to fight is the same guy outside the cage, too. This isn’t a guy being a character or trying to hype a fight; Diaz is just nuts and it’s absolutely awesome.
With someone like Michael Bisping, Chael Sonnen or Quinton Jackson we know that a lot of what they say is more for hype than who they are. Being a personality gets you higher up on cards because people will pay to say you win (or lose). It’s something all sports have in common; Peyton Manning is more popular and considered a better QB, for example, than some think he ought to be because he’s more visible and seems like a genuinely good guy. He’s a personality and some people like him more because of it. It’s a part the Colts QB plays and he does it quite well. And who knows, he might be a genuinely good human being when the cameras are off. Life does imitate art, sometimes at least, and sometimes what seems like a well cultivated public persona is a person’s genuine character. Or it could be a part, like many athletes over the years.
Diaz isn’t playing a part though. Diaz is just flat out crazy.
Perhaps not in the clinical sense, but probably not far from it, we don’t blink an eye when he’s taunting reporters like Ariel Helwani and throwing water bottles at Jason “Mayhem” Miller for reasons only he fully understands. After earning a six figure payday for his victory over Paul Daley, Diaz is the only guy who could complain about not being paid like a high profile boxer and think about leaving MMA for that sport for a payday that may or may not exist without anyone thinking it’s completely out of character. Considering he speaks openly about how fighting gets in the way of running marathons and smoking marijuana it’s not all that shocking he’d radically change fighting careers and see if he could get the type of paydays reserved for Floyd Mayweather, et al.
Dana White has discussed that its Diaz not “playing the game,” that he could be a star if he would just indulge certain things the MMA world expects. And Diaz, with a fan-friendly style and a unique charisma, could be a massive star if he wanted to be. He could be that guy that is transcendent for a brief moment of time, like Tyson in the ‘80s, but for now Nick Diaz seems content to be a bit off the wall and keep people guessing.
The question that we’d ask of most MMA fighters if they considering quitting the sport and going into boxing would be “man, is he nuts?” The question people ask of Nick Diaz is “What, did his unicorn breeding operation fail and he needs the money?”
