Diaz walks away from the takedown drills and puts on his boxing gear. The southpaw keeps his distance as he spars. Gracie grows restless, and the clock nears 11:30 p.m.
“It’s always like this down here,” Gracie says.
Tunes from The Rolling Stones and The Doors blare through the speakers between tracks by Eminem, System of a Down and the occasional underground artist. Diaz finishes sparring and starts working the pads, the thuds from which remind everyone in the gym -- whittled down from two dozen to just Diaz, his brother and a handful of stragglers -- of his focus on Neer.
“It’s going to help out my school and my team if I go there and put on a good show, so I’m working my ass off for that,” Diaz says. “And the pressure is the same amount for me in every fight, you know? I feel like I can beat anyone that I fight. The thing is you only have that night to do it in. Hopefully, it’ll go good for me and not for him.”
A veteran of 31 fights, Neer (24-6-1) has won seven of his last eight bouts, including a decision victory over American Top Team’s Din Thomas in April.
“Josh Neer is a less technical person, but with that [and] getting into the UFC, he’s had a bunch of tough fights,” Diaz says. “He’s not a guy to come out and quit. He’s a guy to go out there and go hard the whole time because he’s had it rough the whole time. He’s had to fight these technical guys his whole career. With all these fights he’s had, he’s learning the technical points. It’s definitely a tough fight, but I train with tough guys all the time.”
Diaz will enter the Octagon with the knowledge that his brother was able to finish Neer with a kimura when the two met at UFC 62 two years ago. In fact, Nick was the last person to submit Neer, a product of the famed Miletich Fighting Systems camp in Bettendorf, Iowa.
“If he doesn’t [finish], it’s just gonna get worse off on him,” says Diaz, who has not competed since he submitted Kurt Pellegrino at UFC Fight Night 13. “If I had my way, I would not have time on these fights or make more rounds. Sometimes I’m a slow starter, but that’s what helped me get through [Pellegrino in April]. I had to wake my ass up.”
The exposure in a Spike TV main event can only boost Team Stockton’s growth. Opposed by a gritty fighter like Neer, Diaz knows only an on-point effort will showcase his skills in the right ways. Gracie, too, predicts an all-out war, a chin-versus-chin battle with some slick ground action.
Burning the midnight oil
As Diaz finishes up work on the pads, only five other fighters remain in the gym. Gracie leaves, unable to keep up for the entire training session. He stands on the ring apron, as Diaz, his prized 23-year-old protégé, gives him a departing hug.
Diaz continues to shadowbox with weights in the ring, as Nick waits for him to finish on the mats. The older of the two brothers recalls a tiresome six-mile-long bike ride earlier in the day, a ride for which Diaz most likely joined him. Killing boredom, Nick starts doing guard sit-ups around a heavy bag.
Diaz, meanwhile, exits and starts to play around in the mirror. Perhaps spurred by the lack of action, the lanky lightweight performs squat thrust pushups with no timer. He moves back into the cage and puts his body through sit-ups before he switches to leg raises and traditional pushups for good measure. It is now past midnight.
Diaz soon closes the garage door, shutting down the gym. After some rest and a verbal jab from his brother, he turns off the radio, and the lights go dark. His training concludes for the day.
Unaffected by fame, Diaz continues to put in the work that transformed him from a gangly kid from Stockton into a dangerous mixed martial artist, lethal on his feet and on the ground. Though he has rattled off four straight wins, he only needs to look to his brother to see how fast careers can change. In 2005, Nick -- a prospect of equal, if not greater value -- had a chance to cash in when he took on the then undefeated Diego Sanchez in the main event of “The Ultimate Fighter 2” Finale. A hard-fought decision loss sidetracked the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, as he became notorious for his antics inside and outside the ring, including run-ins with athletic commissions.
Diaz has steered clear of those obstacles thus far.
“I just want to fight everyone in the division,” he says, having openly pined for a match with Tyson Griffin. “There are some I want to fight more than others. No rush, they’re all going to be there. One at a time, and right now it’s Josh Neer. Whoever’s next after that, line them up.”