FIGHTING WORDS

Fighter Nate Diaz Feels No Remorse For Using Gay Slur Against Opponent

diazEven after he was fined $20, 000 and received a 90 days suspension from the Ultimate Fighting Championship for sending a tweet using the f-word to describe a competitor, lightweight Nate Diaz contends he’s done nothing wrong.

On May 16, Diaz expressed sympathy for a fellow fighter who lost out on $130,000 in bonus money after testing positive for marijuana  by sending a tweet that read: “I feel bad for Pat Healy that they took a innocent mans money and I think the guy who took the money is the biggest fag in the world.”

Although the UFC was quick to condemn Diaz’s message, the fighter’s manager Mike Kogan made an unsuccessful attempt at damage control saying his client meant no offense to gay people, that his connotation of the word is merely “bitch” or “little punk.”

On Monday Kogan appeared on the MMAHour in a further attempt to explain that his client is simply misunderstood and hadn’t intended to offend gay people.

“Nate doesn’t feel remorse for what he said,” Kogan told host Ariel Helwani.”I don’t feel remorse for what he said. I don’t feel remorse for defending what he said or elaborating on what he said. Because it was not a homophobic statement. It was not intended to offend homosexuals. We weren’t even talking about homosexuals. One can debate the multiple uses of this term. We can sit here and debate in the English language, there’s a lot of words that mean a lot of different things, but whatever. As it is, it wasn’t intended to be used the way people tried to twist the way it was being used. So therefore, what does he have to feel bad about?”

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