‘The Rock’ responds to Diaz: He knows Masvidal and I are boys

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Dwayne Johnson responds to Nate Diaz’s tirades against him during the UFC 244 post-fight presser.

During the UFC 244 post-fight presser, Nate Diaz wasn’t too pleased with Dwayne Johnson, who placed the ‘BMF’ title around Jorge Masvidal’s waist. Diaz’s gripe with “The Rock” was the latter’s supposed bias towards “Gamebred.”

“He’s on that side, f—k him. I’m on the West Coast side. Mike Tyson should have been here anyway. He’s the baddest man on the planet, right? He should have been the one over here (handing over the belt).

“I’m over here hurting on The Rock, huh?” Diaz said with a laugh. “You guys caught me under a bad time. The Rock’s cool, I like The Rock, I like Ballers. But he picked the wrong side, so he can get it too, he can get his ass whooped too, straight up.”

On Monday’s episode of the Ariel Helwani MMA Show, Johnson responded to Diaz’s presser comments, which he says wasn’t a surprise to him.

“He is as advertised. Nate, he gets it,” he said (transcript by MMA Mania). “He knows that me and Jorge were boys, we’re from Miami. We have a lot of deep connections down there. A lot of the fighters we know, a lot of the coaches and trainers that we know, a lot of the gyms that we’ve been to down there.

“So there’s a connection, so no I was totally fine with it. He gets it.”

Despite his admission of siding with Masvidal, “The Rock” maintains he tried to be impartial during the promotion of the fight.

“I went into the fight, I wanted to be as neutral as possible when I was promoting it because as we’re leading up to it and selling it on pay-per-view, I didn’t want to come out and say, ‘Jorge is my boy and he’s gonna win,’” he said. “No, I just wanted to be neutral and I thought that was the best, smartest, strategic play to get as many new eyes on this fight as possible and again help impact in my own little way the bottom line.

“From what I’m told, since UFC’s transition it was the biggest fight they’ve ever had, second I’m sorry, to Conor and Khabib, which is quite an amazing accomplishment. I’m very proud for both those guys.”

During the UFC 244 pre-fight presser, Johnson announced his new movie about MMA legend Mark Kerr.