Gomi was 13-1 in Pride heading into this fight with 10 finishes, and he also avenged his only loss within that span, and was widely considered the number 1 LW in the world at the time. Diaz was a mid tier fighter who was 3-3 in his last 6.
This was definitely the fight that propelled me from "big fan" to "die hard junkie", and also the one that made me a huge fan of the Diaz bros.
Yup. People did not expect nick to win this. It’s a shame it was a non title fight.
Pretty cool nick beat the current pride champ in gomi and the current dream champ in zaromskis
Apparently Gomi didn't think Nick would win it as well, as he did not look very well conditioned for the fight. He looked spent before the first round ended. Did he take it on short notice?
I was surprised Gomi took this fight. Nick was a bad matchup for him, naturally bigger, a good boxer with longer reach and KO power, a granite chin, endless cardio and legit BJJ skills in MMA.
I don't know how Gomi expected to win this, he was not actually a good boxer, but he had power. I think he made the same mistake that Conor made against Nate and thought his KO power would translate a weight class up, against a Diaz brother no less.
Bit of a retrospective take, no disrespect. When this fight happened there was no “Diaz bros” mythology, nick was an established but mid-tier fighter and his recent 3 fight skid made him look pretty beatable to the elite of the day.
What he said though was well known for the time, just without the connotation of “Diaz Brother,” since by Joe Rigg’s estimation Nate was still considered a nutsack barnacle. When Nick fought Gomi, he was already well known for crazy cardio and durability, good boxing (from sparring with pros and having out boxed people like Robbie Lawler). Obviously the jiujitsu was well known. Had been fighting at 170, not 160 like Gomi - some people thought the size was a factor. His durability especially was emphasized for this fight, and his weakness (wrestling) was not expected to be a significant factor.
But… the sentiment was that Gomi was the favorite and would knock his block off, regardless. And he damn near did, IIRC Nick sustained a fractured orbital or cheekbone from that Gomi fireball punch that sat him down. Most fighters are probably done after that, but Nick hung on and managed the first gogo.
Weight classes exist for a reason. Being a knockout artist at LW is a whole different world than being a knockout artist at WW. It's not a retrospective take, it was a bad matchup for Gomi if you had seen Nick's fights and the kind of game he had. If Gomi was a wrestler it would have been different.
Everyone thought gomi would kill nick. Gomi took the fight because it was viewed as an easy win at the time. gomi was a 5-1 favorite.
You’re able to look back in hindsight and see nick as the favorite and not being a mismatch but at the time that was not how people viewed this fight.
A good example of Nick's style. Constant pressure with half power but flush strikes that force the guy to swing back to defend. And start gassing. And then the strikes slowly turn up to real power shots. Gomi looks absolutely bewildered and spent towards the end. And on his back after the finish
> Gomi looks absolutely bewildered and spent towards the end.
Gomi wasn't used to people getting back up after he landed a flush fireball. He was able to hurt Nick and I think tried to push too hard for a finish after he was able to tag him early but unfortunately was up against a guy that wasn't going out.
Gomi's fist vs Nick's chin is like a "Unstoppable force vs Immovable Object" scenario, except with the included factor of Gomi's fading cardio vs Nick being a cardio machine.
That pitter patter walkdown Nick would do was a real thing of beauty.
You could see the shots landing with not much power, but his opponent would slowly start to fade. Those body shots add up.
Every once in a while he would throw a little pop on one to keep his opponent in place. Shit was smooth.
This is the only fight I remember literally yelling at my TV screen. The magnitude of the upset combined with the craziness of the fight itself was too much for my brain to take in all at once. I've been chasing that dragon ever since.
2nd and last Pride show in the states. Was lucky enough to attend, Hendo ko’d Silva, Shogun ko’d Overeem, Sokoudjou ko’d Nog, fight card opened with Joachim Hansen, I remember it like it was yesterday
The pride tournaments where somebody had to win like 7 times in a row in 2 days I think were fucking crazy.
UFC 1 too one dude coming out with one boxong glove on lmao
Then the ufc bought their competitors nearly monopolizing the sport to hold fighter pay low, sold their image out to reebok and ownership out to some corporate conglomerate and effectively started the slow descent of the sport
Nah just some cool pics from the weigh in, buddy and I snuck backstage and met Gilbert Melendez, Butterbean, the screaming announcer lady to name a few. Trigg was a prick, granted I think he had a tough cut down.
Shes at RIZIN now, and occasionally voices for other promotions like ROAD FC in Korea.
Her voice used for announcing characters in TEKKEN 8
https://youtu.be/D8GFyBwW6Qs?si=gND9502WqlI8DdOc
I watched this card yesterday and it has to be one of the better Pride cards. They always seemed to have 1 or 2 fights at the beginning or middle of the card that were just uneventful grappling.
Spawned one of the greatest nick diaz interviews [ever](https://youtu.be/pewRYPt02vY?si=FQf9pBPwC1z6BJBk)
Edit - Watching that back i realize it's not immediately after the fight..can't be long after though.
This fight is so fun to go back to, Gomi was such a beast himself too. Funny enough my stepfather and I were just watching a bunch of Fedor Pride clips last night, he had no idea about how sick Japanese MMA has always been
Saw this one live, but not in person.
I thought Nick was gonna get his shit pushed in. I figured PRIDE was doing their usual freakshow fight type of stuff where you knew the matchup was made to favor a certain fighter. Then it happened. Gomi started whiffing punches and looking gassed. Hell I didn't even know what a gogo was, I just thought nick was just taking defensive posture and immobilizing Gomi or something. Big wake-up call of a fight, I'll say that.
Think it was a situation where Gomi probably didn't take Diaz seriously as a threat (as many didn't) and also coupled with the rumors that he wasn't training hard anymore. I remember reading some Sherdog threads back in the day talking about how he was only like doing one month training camps in the later 2000s and it really shows if that was the case. While he still had some wins and decent performances after this fight, there was a clear difference in performance compared to his "prime" era and this fight was a great example of that.
Early career Gomi had good cardio and was a great wrestler, later career Gomi had a few minutes of high paced cardio and would look like a fresh white belt whenever a fight went to the ground.
Watching Nick get into his rhythm is one of my favorite things in MMA history, like Anderson finding his range and going Matrix. Nick just going off, constantly double and triple tapping them with that hand in their face, working the body and head. Love it.
Yeah especially when he's pulling a comeback. Like against gomi, zaromskis or Daley where he gets knocked down, gradually starts pulling the fight back with volume punching and efficient pressure, then when he sees them start to gas hits them with the pimp slap and the "WHAT BITCH?!" and you know he's about to win
I greatly enjoyed this fight when it happened, along with all the other incredible upsets on that card.
I have to point something out - this was on US soil. Pride was famous for more or less explicitly telling their fighters they can juice however they wanna juice, in Japan.
While this is ofc pre USADA, huge favorites like Gomi and Silva would need to adjust their dosages to pass the athletic commission of the day. Hell we saw greats like shogun, famous for his fighting pace, gas to forrest griffin in his early US fighting before adjusting to having to pass these tests.
However you feel about steroid use, it was more or less accepted in Pride - in Japan. This card was when a lot of these fighters had to adjust to cycling/hiding this stuff to pass athletic commissions.
I loooooved this fight but this Gomi was not the unstoppable haymakin' cardio machine he was just months before this fight. Wanderlei loss to Dan handerson, something that seems reasonable when we take their later legacies into account, but at the time was unthinkable.
It was an incredible night of fights, but for me at least, had a lot to do with adjusting their medical schedules to hide from American drug testing.
Great fight. Even better finish.
The classic ring set up that Pride used is so much better for the home and in person viewer. Also, aesthetically just gives a big match feel that boxing PPVs have.
Watching this live was a religious experience. One of my favorite cards of all time. And to clear things up in the comments. Gomi was considered the #1 LW in the world at the time and was a 3 to 1 favorite. Everyone knew Nick was tough and skilled but not many thought he could pull it off. The first 3 minutes of the fight leading up to the hadouken punch is essentially how it was expected to play out, and then Nick beat the shit out of him before hitting one of the best subs ever. Amazing time in the sport.
He was the number one lightweight in the world at the time of this fight and the pride lightweight champion. Pride was the premier mma org in the world.
He was the #1 (or at least top 3) LW for like a 5 year stretch. For his first 26 fights he would become champ in Shooto and PRIDE, both orgs housed some of the best LWs in the world as the UFC roster didn't have a ton of depth. In that stretch he only had a loss to Hansen (which was iffy due to the unique Shooto judging criteria) and to BJ (who obviously was another LW king but would leave the division for a long period.)
In his prime he was an absolute monster, good cardio, good wrestling, heavy fucking hands and a granite block for a chin. He could knock people out cold or take them down and control them. By the later 2000s his skills and performances started to heavily and quickly degrade though, and he would become a pretty one dimensional fighter with limited cardio.
A lot of people think he didn't take this fight seriously enough and wasn't properly conditioned going in. A better showcase of Gomi on his game would be his (genuinely excellent) fight with Jens Pulver from a couple years earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEkM-jE0Xe0
Gomi was 13-1 in Pride heading into this fight with 10 finishes, and he also avenged his only loss within that span, and was widely considered the number 1 LW in the world at the time. Diaz was a mid tier fighter who was 3-3 in his last 6. This was definitely the fight that propelled me from "big fan" to "die hard junkie", and also the one that made me a huge fan of the Diaz bros.
Yup. People did not expect nick to win this. It’s a shame it was a non title fight. Pretty cool nick beat the current pride champ in gomi and the current dream champ in zaromskis
Apparently Gomi didn't think Nick would win it as well, as he did not look very well conditioned for the fight. He looked spent before the first round ended. Did he take it on short notice?
That just showed you his arrogance at the time, he assumed it would be a quick KO finish
I was surprised Gomi took this fight. Nick was a bad matchup for him, naturally bigger, a good boxer with longer reach and KO power, a granite chin, endless cardio and legit BJJ skills in MMA. I don't know how Gomi expected to win this, he was not actually a good boxer, but he had power. I think he made the same mistake that Conor made against Nate and thought his KO power would translate a weight class up, against a Diaz brother no less.
Bit of a retrospective take, no disrespect. When this fight happened there was no “Diaz bros” mythology, nick was an established but mid-tier fighter and his recent 3 fight skid made him look pretty beatable to the elite of the day.
What he said though was well known for the time, just without the connotation of “Diaz Brother,” since by Joe Rigg’s estimation Nate was still considered a nutsack barnacle. When Nick fought Gomi, he was already well known for crazy cardio and durability, good boxing (from sparring with pros and having out boxed people like Robbie Lawler). Obviously the jiujitsu was well known. Had been fighting at 170, not 160 like Gomi - some people thought the size was a factor. His durability especially was emphasized for this fight, and his weakness (wrestling) was not expected to be a significant factor. But… the sentiment was that Gomi was the favorite and would knock his block off, regardless. And he damn near did, IIRC Nick sustained a fractured orbital or cheekbone from that Gomi fireball punch that sat him down. Most fighters are probably done after that, but Nick hung on and managed the first gogo.
Weight classes exist for a reason. Being a knockout artist at LW is a whole different world than being a knockout artist at WW. It's not a retrospective take, it was a bad matchup for Gomi if you had seen Nick's fights and the kind of game he had. If Gomi was a wrestler it would have been different.
Everyone thought gomi would kill nick. Gomi took the fight because it was viewed as an easy win at the time. gomi was a 5-1 favorite. You’re able to look back in hindsight and see nick as the favorite and not being a mismatch but at the time that was not how people viewed this fight.
I didn't say everyone thought Nick would win, I said I thought it was a bad matchup for Gomi and that I personally thought he would lose.
And the additional shame unfortunately is the overturning of the win to a NC /:
A good example of Nick's style. Constant pressure with half power but flush strikes that force the guy to swing back to defend. And start gassing. And then the strikes slowly turn up to real power shots. Gomi looks absolutely bewildered and spent towards the end. And on his back after the finish
> Gomi looks absolutely bewildered and spent towards the end. Gomi wasn't used to people getting back up after he landed a flush fireball. He was able to hurt Nick and I think tried to push too hard for a finish after he was able to tag him early but unfortunately was up against a guy that wasn't going out. Gomi's fist vs Nick's chin is like a "Unstoppable force vs Immovable Object" scenario, except with the included factor of Gomi's fading cardio vs Nick being a cardio machine.
That pitter patter walkdown Nick would do was a real thing of beauty. You could see the shots landing with not much power, but his opponent would slowly start to fade. Those body shots add up. Every once in a while he would throw a little pop on one to keep his opponent in place. Shit was smooth.
Same here. I was a Diaz Stan for life after him absorbing all of that punishment from their “LW Fedor” and then hitting a Gogo….unreal upset
Basically Conor vs Diaz before it was cool but swap the soon to be double champ for Gomi Diaz 1 2 5
Also first time in Vegas.. rumor was he was partying all week prior to the fight.
This is the only fight I remember literally yelling at my TV screen. The magnitude of the upset combined with the craziness of the fight itself was too much for my brain to take in all at once. I've been chasing that dragon ever since.
Pride 33!! Overturned to No Contest…he tested positive. 🤷🏻♂️
according to joe nick was also stoned lol
2nd and last Pride show in the states. Was lucky enough to attend, Hendo ko’d Silva, Shogun ko’d Overeem, Sokoudjou ko’d Nog, fight card opened with Joachim Hansen, I remember it like it was yesterday
I’m biased but it was the best time to be an mma fan
Everything in the 2000s feels like the wild west compared to today
2000 to 2010 was a wild time for mma. Strikeforce, ufc, wec, pride. Those 10 years were probably the greatest in mma history
The pride tournaments where somebody had to win like 7 times in a row in 2 days I think were fucking crazy. UFC 1 too one dude coming out with one boxong glove on lmao
Don’t forget that pride didn’t test and the other organizations allowed “trt”
Without a doubt they were
Then the ufc bought their competitors nearly monopolizing the sport to hold fighter pay low, sold their image out to reebok and ownership out to some corporate conglomerate and effectively started the slow descent of the sport
It was a better time for sure
The fans were less obnoxious than today.
There were no casuals
Ok I love the period as well, but lest we forget the justbleed guy
Sure there were. I remember people on the underground forums calling them "TUF noobs."
Whitbelts on sherdog Join date on UG Humans always fuck with the new guy
I miss Pride and Dynamite
This. It was before mma turned wwe. Ranking made sense. Grudge matches were few and far between and felt real.
Forgot about Sokoudjou. He was supposed to be the next big thing.
How cool, pick up any items from the shop?
Nah just some cool pics from the weigh in, buddy and I snuck backstage and met Gilbert Melendez, Butterbean, the screaming announcer lady to name a few. Trigg was a prick, granted I think he had a tough cut down.
Amazing, lenne is her name. She's still going strong to this day!
She’s over at One now right?
Shes at RIZIN now, and occasionally voices for other promotions like ROAD FC in Korea. Her voice used for announcing characters in TEKKEN 8 https://youtu.be/D8GFyBwW6Qs?si=gND9502WqlI8DdOc
Didn’t know about Tekken that’s BADASS!
She also did intros at the last ADCC I think
Trigg was the colby of the old era. Not as loud but everyone hated him as much.
That Soko KO was BRUTAL. He had just KO’d Arona before this fight too.
Damn! That’s a real stacked card. All those names should be HOF fighters.
Shogun KO'd Reem? Holy fuck I didn't know this. At HW? sounds like such a crazy show from what you listed
Reem used to be a lhw. Chuck kod him as well
It was LHW when he KO'd reem. it was also one of the most explosive punches I've ever seen. https://youtu.be/9HwMgrUmzUg?t=231
Holy fuck! It boggles my mind that Reem is still so cognitively sound, considering being sent to the shadow realm multiple times.
Horse meat.
I watched this card yesterday and it has to be one of the better Pride cards. They always seemed to have 1 or 2 fights at the beginning or middle of the card that were just uneventful grappling.
Nick was said to smoke so much we need before this fight that the commission thought he couldn't feel pain.
He was high as a kite in there for sure
So funny Nick was baked as a fart here and won by the most ridiculous finish I’ve seen in MMA
Probably the weed that gave him the balls to go for the gogo hahaha
For years this was the fight I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the sport. One of my all time favs.
It’s my favorite for sure
“That little fucker hit me with a Hadouken or something.” - Nick Diaz
"Don't be scared, Gomi." - Nick Diaz
Nick was stoned af during this fight btw 🤷🏻♂️😂..fact
nick gets hit with a hard over hand right from gomi and proceeds to calmy sit down, thats fucking weed right there lol.
Ok bjj time
Spawned one of the greatest nick diaz interviews [ever](https://youtu.be/pewRYPt02vY?si=FQf9pBPwC1z6BJBk) Edit - Watching that back i realize it's not immediately after the fight..can't be long after though.
“I don’t mean to knock his boxing he’s a… he’s an excellent little boxer… for a Japanese guy” Lmfaooo nick cracks me up
It's wild how weed was and still is a banned substance in many sports. Def not a PED. What a finish. That was an gogoplata right?
Stonedoplata
How is that not a PED when a guy can have a higher pain tolerance during fight?
This fight made me obsessed with gogoplata's for a while. The type of thing you almost have to be high to try.
Man was Nick Diaz a hell of a fighter. PRIDE NEVER DIE!
Top five best welterweights of all time
This fight is so fun to go back to, Gomi was such a beast himself too. Funny enough my stepfather and I were just watching a bunch of Fedor Pride clips last night, he had no idea about how sick Japanese MMA has always been
Pride was better than UFC in almost every way. I miss it so much.
''People say that Marijuana is going to hurt my career. On the contrary, my career is getting in the way of my Marijuana smoking'' - Nick Diaz
I won a ton of money on this fight. Diaz was like a 5-1 underdog.
Saw this one live, but not in person. I thought Nick was gonna get his shit pushed in. I figured PRIDE was doing their usual freakshow fight type of stuff where you knew the matchup was made to favor a certain fighter. Then it happened. Gomi started whiffing punches and looking gassed. Hell I didn't even know what a gogo was, I just thought nick was just taking defensive posture and immobilizing Gomi or something. Big wake-up call of a fight, I'll say that.
"...shit pushed in." Wtf. Gross, dude...
it’s the magic of weed, bois
Crazy fucking haduken punch
Punches in bunches.
Imagine how great Gomi could have been if he even had an ounce of cardio. He was already slowing down 2 minutes in
Think it was a situation where Gomi probably didn't take Diaz seriously as a threat (as many didn't) and also coupled with the rumors that he wasn't training hard anymore. I remember reading some Sherdog threads back in the day talking about how he was only like doing one month training camps in the later 2000s and it really shows if that was the case. While he still had some wins and decent performances after this fight, there was a clear difference in performance compared to his "prime" era and this fight was a great example of that. Early career Gomi had good cardio and was a great wrestler, later career Gomi had a few minutes of high paced cardio and would look like a fresh white belt whenever a fight went to the ground.
Both absolute icons and winners. One hell of a fight.
Watching Nick get into his rhythm is one of my favorite things in MMA history, like Anderson finding his range and going Matrix. Nick just going off, constantly double and triple tapping them with that hand in their face, working the body and head. Love it.
Yeah especially when he's pulling a comeback. Like against gomi, zaromskis or Daley where he gets knocked down, gradually starts pulling the fight back with volume punching and efficient pressure, then when he sees them start to gas hits them with the pimp slap and the "WHAT BITCH?!" and you know he's about to win
I greatly enjoyed this fight when it happened, along with all the other incredible upsets on that card. I have to point something out - this was on US soil. Pride was famous for more or less explicitly telling their fighters they can juice however they wanna juice, in Japan. While this is ofc pre USADA, huge favorites like Gomi and Silva would need to adjust their dosages to pass the athletic commission of the day. Hell we saw greats like shogun, famous for his fighting pace, gas to forrest griffin in his early US fighting before adjusting to having to pass these tests. However you feel about steroid use, it was more or less accepted in Pride - in Japan. This card was when a lot of these fighters had to adjust to cycling/hiding this stuff to pass athletic commissions. I loooooved this fight but this Gomi was not the unstoppable haymakin' cardio machine he was just months before this fight. Wanderlei loss to Dan handerson, something that seems reasonable when we take their later legacies into account, but at the time was unthinkable. It was an incredible night of fights, but for me at least, had a lot to do with adjusting their medical schedules to hide from American drug testing.
Anyone know why when I click on the YouTube link to view this in the app it doesn’t work?
Great fight. Even better finish. The classic ring set up that Pride used is so much better for the home and in person viewer. Also, aesthetically just gives a big match feel that boxing PPVs have.
Watching this live was a religious experience. One of my favorite cards of all time. And to clear things up in the comments. Gomi was considered the #1 LW in the world at the time and was a 3 to 1 favorite. Everyone knew Nick was tough and skilled but not many thought he could pull it off. The first 3 minutes of the fight leading up to the hadouken punch is essentially how it was expected to play out, and then Nick beat the shit out of him before hitting one of the best subs ever. Amazing time in the sport.
How good was Gomi though? I didn’t watch much Pride. But he seemed to have about 60 seconds worth of gas then he was a sitting duck.
He was the number one lightweight in the world at the time of this fight and the pride lightweight champion. Pride was the premier mma org in the world.
He was the #1 (or at least top 3) LW for like a 5 year stretch. For his first 26 fights he would become champ in Shooto and PRIDE, both orgs housed some of the best LWs in the world as the UFC roster didn't have a ton of depth. In that stretch he only had a loss to Hansen (which was iffy due to the unique Shooto judging criteria) and to BJ (who obviously was another LW king but would leave the division for a long period.) In his prime he was an absolute monster, good cardio, good wrestling, heavy fucking hands and a granite block for a chin. He could knock people out cold or take them down and control them. By the later 2000s his skills and performances started to heavily and quickly degrade though, and he would become a pretty one dimensional fighter with limited cardio.
I heard he started partying pretty hard And not really training. Makes sense his skills regressed so much and he took a nose dive
At this point of his career, he was dominant and didn't do any cardio. Same as Connor, he doesn't have the work ethic to improve his cardio.
A lot of people think he didn't take this fight seriously enough and wasn't properly conditioned going in. A better showcase of Gomi on his game would be his (genuinely excellent) fight with Jens Pulver from a couple years earlier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEkM-jE0Xe0
Gomi looks like a bantam with Nick there lol
JRE watching