Former coach Cesar Gracie concerned with Nick Diaz’s training camp: ‘It’s a toss up what’s gonna happen’

Nick Diaz is set to make his return to action on August 3rd in Abu Dhabi. It’s his first fight since a dispiriting loss to Robbie Lawler in 2021, and fans are hopeful Diaz is healthy now and prepared for a tough fight against No. 13 ranked welterweight Vicente Luque.

Nick’s former head coach Cesar Gracie is also hoping for the best, although he admitted to having some concerns about Nick’s preparations for the fight. Given the one-foot-in, one-foot-out nature of Nick’s career over the past several years, that’s not exactly reassuring.

“I’m really not involved in that fight,” Gracie told Submission Radio. “I’m gonna be perfectly honest with you, that wasn’t my idea. If I was advising Nick, I wouldn’t have advised him to do that fight. It’s in Abu Dhabi. I wouldn’t advise to go fight overseas at this point. Especially [to fight] Luque, who is a very tough guy.”

“Nick is a tough guy. But it just doesn’t make that much sense to me where Nick is at in his career. It’s not the fight I would have made, and don’t even know what’s going on with that fight, to be honest with you.”

“It’s a toss-up what’s gonna happen,” he said before saying he hasn’t been involved in the Luque camp. “I don’t really see him training with fighters. And I don’t know what’s going on with that fight.”

While Gracie confirmed that he still spoke with Diaz regularly, the Stockton legend is currently training in Houston, Texas and hasn’t been back to train with the Skrap Pack or his little brother Nate for months. He didn’t even make it to Anaheim for Nate’s fight against Jorge Masvidal (watch the highlights here).

“He’s just not really part of the the training with the guys right now,” Cesar said. “Like normally right now, he’d be training with Jake Shields. He’d be training with his brother. He would have been sparring. Nick was not there last night, for example, for Nate’s fight.”

“No bad blood or anything whatsoever. It’s just I think that the people that are holding on to Nick right now in Texas wanna hold on to Nick. And so I hope they take good care of him.”

While Diaz and Gracie go way back and are practically family, sometimes you have to step away from family to escape bad habits. Pictures of Nick coming out of Houston have the Stockton native looking ripped as he does roadwork with “The Black Beast” Derrick Lewis. If he doesn’t blow off fight camp to go on a bender (and who would do that), we could see a healthy and well prepared Nick Diaz in Abu Dhabi.

And as we saw in the Nate Diaz vs. Jorge Masvidal rematch, a healthy and well prepared Diaz brother is something to behold.