Jorge Masvidal hopes he can make a connection for Nate Diaz that helps him put his current legal issues in the past.
Masvidal, who beat Diaz by doctor’s stoppage TKO in the lone “BMF” title fight in history at UFC 244 in November 2019, is looking to offer a helping hand to his former opponent after Diaz found himself in the crosshairs of the law after he was caught on video choking Logan Paul lookalike Rodney Peterson unconscious during a street brawl in New Orleans this past weekend.
Diaz turned himself in to the New Orleans Police Department after an arrest warrant was issued, and is currently out on a $10,000 bond. He does not currently have a hearing date scheduled, but when the time has come, Masvidal said he was told to try to make a connection with celebrity lawyer Bradford Cohen.
“Nate Diaz if you see this, I’ve got a top lawyer in the country who wants to represent you,” Masvidal told MMA Junkie on Friday. “His name is Brad Cohan. Have your people get in touch with him. He wants to take care of you. The dude is the man. I just remembered he has told me that. I don’t talk to Nate Diaz, but my boys at MMA Junkie can give him the message. Brad Cohan is the man.”
According to his Wikipedia page, Cohen’s roster of past clients includes Drake, Vanilla Ice, DMX, Dennis Rodman and Plaxico Burress. Additionally, Cohen represented Lil’ Wayne and Kodak Black when they successfully received federal pardons from Donald Trump in 2021.
Masvidal, who has his own legal case pending after he allegedly assaulted fellow UFC fighter Colby Covington in March 2022, thinks the situation with Diaz is proof of how cautious professional fighters must be in public settings.
“What it looked like to me is this dude ran up on Nate, and you’ve got to respect every threat,” Masvidal said.
“It looked like it was self-defense. But I don’t know. I didn’t see the whole video, I just saw one sh*tty angle so I don’t want to say too much. I just want to say: You can’t run up on people. You can’t violate people’s personal space and feel it’s cool to get away with. As good of an ass-kicking machine as I am, I give everyone their personal space. I don’t invade nobody, even if I have to ask, ‘Where’s the train stop?’ or something – I do it from a safe distance. You don’t want to be invading space cause you just don’t know.”
Despite Diaz’s ongoing case, it doesn’t appear his boxing match with Jake Paul on Aug. 5 in Dallas will be impacted. All signs point to the fight proceeding as planned, and Masvidal thinks it’s a compelling matchup.
On paper, Masvidal thinks it should be Paul’s fight to win. However, when it comes down to it, he envisions Diaz coming out as the winner.
“It’s just the time of it,” Masvidal said. “Jake’s obviously a lot younger than Nate. If Nate’s in his prime, I think he smokes Jake. But Nate’s been out of it for a while. I don’t know what kind of shape his lifestyle is like outside a serious training camp. He hasn’t been in a training camp in a while, so I don’t know. I think the odds are a lot on him. Jake’s been competing and Jake’s naturally a lot bigger, but all that being said, I think Nate just finds a way to tough-guy it out and just beat up Jake and break him down. I think Jake will run a lot.”
