Nate Diaz has already exited a Russian reality show he was filming alongside Jon Jones in Thailand.
The UFC veteran traveled there to film an Ultimate Fighter type series where he was coaching alongside Jones but it didn’t take long for mayhem to erupt, which resulted in Diaz leaving the show and flying back home to California. Diaz’s longtime friend and teammate Jake Shields was also there filming the show and he documented the insanity as it happened before production had really even started.
Additional sources confirmed to MMA Fighting on Wednesday that Diaz left the show and returned home after an insane brawl broke out between some of the competitors on the show and members of Diaz’s team.
Diaz’s representatives were unavailable for comment on the situation.
In a video posted to YouTube, Shields stated that the whole production was a mess from the time they first arrived in Thailand, but the real melee happened after one of the fighters got in Diaz’s face during an introduction.
The video Shields provided shows the Russian fighter first speaking to Jones and then approaching Diaz. It appears that the fighter tries to grab Diaz and Diaz immediately shrugs him off.
The situation escalates moments later with Diaz and the fighter getting into a physical altercation with Shields saying “Nate went and slapped him.” The altercation then fully erupts after a member of Diaz’s team punches the fighter.
Shields claims that rather than removing the Russian fighter from the show, he was allowed to return back into the same room where another melee broke out. This time, Shields says he got involved and tackled the fighter who initially got into the altercation with Diaz.
“Right when I started to go off on him, I got just blitzed from the side,” Shields said. “Not where the fighters were, a couple of guys just started blitzing me, which to me seemed like they were crew working there, not fighters because the fighters were in the chairs.
“To me it was very clear that it was the staff and the workers. That was one of those moments where’s like I better diffuse the situation.”
After the brawl got broken up, Shields says the “chaos” continued and that led to all of Diaz’s team deciding to vacate the premises and leave the show.
Eventually, Shields claims the production team tried to figure out a way to get Diaz and his team to return to the show but by that point, everybody involved was already checked out and ready to return home.
“Why are we going to go back and film a show — it’s one thing to be fighting the fighters, that’s why I went out there with Nate, I thought it was a possibility some of these fighters will try to test him — but when you have potentially the crew hitting you, too it’s like no, f*ck that,” Shields said.
A few days later, Diaz and his entire team flew back home to California and the reality show experiment in Thailand came to an abrupt end.
