One of MMA’s most unique personalities and a constant lightning rod for criticism, Stockton, California’s Nick Diaz first made his name fighting on the local California circuit, defeating UFC veteran Chris Lytle to win the IFC Welterweight Title in 2002. Diaz entered the UFC in 2003 with an armbar victory over Jeremy Jackson, and quickly established himself as one of the standout talents of the welterweight division, combining an expert-level Jiu-Jitsu game with crisp, stinging boxing.

Diaz also emerged as one of the organization’s most incendiary fighters, displaying brash, trash-talking bravado and nasty in-cage antics in his battles with elite MMA fighters like Robbie Lawler, Karo Parisyan, and Diego Sanchez. Many of his stories are now legendary, including the tale of his UFC 57 fight with Joe Riggs, which resumed in the emergency room of the local hospital following the event while the two fighters wore medical gowns and intravenous drips. Diaz and Riggs both confirm the account.

After leaving the UFC in 2006, Diaz fought in various promotions, most famously defeating Japanese star Takanori Gomi -- at that time considered by many the world’s best lighweight -- via a sensational gogoplata following a wild, barn-burning affair. However, the result was overturned and declared a No Contest after Diaz tested positive for extremely high blood THC levels, suggesting that he was high during the course of the fight.

Since that time, Diaz has gone on to compete for the California-based Strikeforce promotion, defeating the likes of Frank Shamrock, Scott Smith, and Marius Zaromskis, all of them by TKO, to win the vacant Strikeforce Welterweight Championship.

A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Cesar Gracie, Diaz has one of the most polished grappling games in the welterweight division, having defeated Josh Neer by kimura in addition to his famed gogoplata of Gomi. But it is his awkward and punishing boxing style — aided in recent years by an increase in his overall size and strength — that has vaulted Diaz into the top tier at 170lbs. The bottom line is that after all of the bravado, Diaz comes to fight. He is a regular triathlete outside the cage who brings extremely high endurance levels to his fights, and pushes a pace with a high-energy striking game that always inflicts more damage than it would appear on camera. At his best he is rightly considered among the top fighters in the world.