Tweeting around with Nate Diaz isn’t the best idea, says John Jones.
On Wednesday, the news broke that Nate Diaz had already filmed with Russia’s Jones, with videos of an insane brawl appearing between the show and Diaz and some contestants on his team. Jake Shields, who was with Diaz as part of the team, said the situation escalated as the fighter tried to grab Diaz, and Jones agreed. Jones says Diaz was already a bit edgy before things jumped out, but he says it’s never a good idea to play with Diaz’s brother.
“We had one of the young fighters, a guy named Zarick. He was playing with Nate,” Jones told Red Corner MMA. “He wanted to play with Nate. Something like Nate came a little on the edge. I think he had his previous beef with the Russian fighters, so when he got here he was a bit on the edge. The playground with Nate was not the best idea.
Diaz had been in a long-standing feud with Khabib Nurmagomedov, but at one point he even hit a lightweight goat. However, Nurmagomedov had been out of the MMA for years and it seemed that bad blood had been forgotten. But perhaps not, as Shields suggested on his podcast that their feud played a role in the brawl.
While that may be true for Jones, the former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion also said the experience was different from the people he’d had in his long MMA career.
“I’ve had the spirit of Bushido for a long time. In that spirit of martial arts, everyone has some sort of specific rules that you don’t intersect,” Jones said. “Like the spirit of martial arts and everything. I don’t think there’s a lot of it here. Some are like warriors, some are really like street fighters. There’s insults, there’s weapons, there’s this show – there’s no such thing as it.”