Now that Nate Diaz’s UFC return is set, the lightweight contender has decided to open up about his lengthy contract dispute with the organization.

Diaz hasn’t graced a UFC cage since a second-round knockout win over Gray Maynard at The Ultimate Fighter 18 Finale a year ago. Since then, “The Ultimate Fighter 5″ winner has tried to negotiate for for better compensation and a new contract. When he didn’t get that, he decided to take a hiatus from competition.

At the time UFC President Dana White said Diaz “doesn’t move the needle” and his one-fight winning streak wasn’t enough to justify a new deal. However, Diaz said that shouldn’t have mattered since the UFC boss apparently told him a renegotiation would be possible after Diaz signed a new contract before his title fight with Benson Henderson in December 2012.

“I went to sign this contract to fight for the title against Henderson, and when I went to sign my contract, they were locking me down for eight fights for sh-tty pay,” Diaz said in an interview on the “You’re Welcome! With Chael Sonnen” podcast. “I was like, ‘This is a world title fight, and you’re going to pay me this chump change?’… I’m like, ‘OK, this is ridiculous, still, because this is a world title fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. That means I’m fighting to be the No. 1 fighter in the world at 155 pounds.’ I think it’s ridiculous because the No. 1 in any sport is probably a millionaire – in golf, in tennis and in soccer.

“Hector Lombard and Eddie Alvarez were with Bellator at the time and were offered hella money to come over. Eddie Alvarez, I know who he is, but nobody else does, and he was going to get paid like 20 times more money than I was going to get to fight for a world title. So I was going to sign to fight for a world title for not even a tenth of what this guy was getting? I don’t think I could sign that contract, so I went in there, and they said, ‘We’re not paying him that much. That’s rumored.’ And I was like, ‘I know you’re paying him this much, and you can’t even double or triple or just change things a little bit to make me happy? What if I became the champion?’ They’re like, ‘Get the championship, and you’ll get this and you’ll get that.’”

Diaz expressed distain toward the contract, but with only a few weeks remaining until the title fight, he said he agreed to sign the deal on the premise he could renegotiate in the near future.

“I was real negative about the situation, and it was two weeks out from the fight, and … (White) was like, ‘Look dude. Whenever you’re not happy with your contract, whenever you’re not happy, just let me know, and we’ll renegotiate,’” Diaz said. “I was just so focused on fighting, I was going to fight and they knew I was going to fight. I signed the contract. But he sold me over with that, ‘Anytime you’re unhappy, let’s renegotiate. We will renegotiate.’”

The 29-year-old went on to suffer a unanimous decision loss to Henderson at UFC on FOX 5. He said he was still disgruntled after the bout, but understood it’d be unwise to ask for more money after a one-sided defeat.

It didn’t help that in Diaz’s very next fight, Josh Thomson knocked him out for the first time in his career, arguably putting his value at an all-time low.

“I signed it, very unhappily, and I went into the fight and I lost, so what am I going to do? Go cry over spilled milk?’ Diaz said. “I wasn’t going to go cry for more money now that I just lost. I understood that. I was thinking I should have won and got a new contract, but what’s done is done.”

Diaz returned to the octagon seven months after the loss to Thomson and defeated Gray Maynard via first-round knockout. He was back on the winning track, so when UFC officials approached him about filling in for teammate Gilbert Melendez in a fight against undefeated contender Khabib Nurmagomedov, Diaz felt he finally had the leverage to again push for a new deal.

“(Nurmagomedov) was supposed to fight Gilbert at the time, and then when things weren’t working out with their whole contract situation, they asked me if I would fight Khabib,” Diaz said. “I just beat Gray Maynard. Then when they asked me (to fight Khabib), I thought, ‘Now’s a good time to come back to the old thing they said.’ So I said, ‘Hey, I’ll fight Khabib, but is it possible for me to renegotiate my contract?’”

The request was denied, and in response Diaz decided to firm his stance. He requested his UFC release but was denied, and the 19-fight UFC vet hasn’t fought since.

While White later stated that Diaz actually turned down the fight with Nurmagomedov, the Stockton, Calif. native is adamant that’s not how events actually transpired.

“They told me I could renegotiate whenever I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy the entire time,” Diaz said. “So now I felt like it was a good time. They’re asking me to fight a guy, so I said, ‘I’ll fight him, but can I renegotiate?’ Then they blew me up all over the social media saying I turned down the fight. They’re all saying I turned down this, I turned down that, but I never turned down any fight ever in my entire life.

“I felt like it was a favor. ‘This didn’t work out with this, so yeah, I’ll fight the guy. Can I renegotiate since you told me I could already do that?’ You know what else? They could have simply said, ‘No.’ And I would have said, ‘Ah, f-ck it.’ Then I would have gone and fought the motherf-cker. They could have said, ‘No,’ but instead, I read it all over the Internet, and I feel like it was kind of a coverup. No one paid attention to anything. I was trying to let it be known what happened with that. I got the sh-t end of the deal on that one.”

Despite his best efforts, Diaz (17-9 MMA, 12-7 UFC) didn’t get what he wanted. He’s set to return to competition under his current contract on Dec. 13 at UFC on FOX 13, where he meets Rafael dos Anjos (22-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC) in the co-main event at Phoenix’s US Airways Center.

After a career-long one-year layoff, Diaz opted to push forward despite his unhappiness.

“I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of for a lot of years with the whole situation,” Diaz said. “More so because I kind of grew up in this, and I didn’t understand or know what was what with money and contracts, and what was happening, until one morning I woke and for some reason I was like, ‘Hold up. I’ve been really underappreciated, underpaid, under-all-kinds-of-sh-t.’

“I wanted to try to get my situation fixed. I was trying to get a fight going on, but at the same time I didn’t want – it was a whole mess going on. But everything got cleared, up and I’m ready to get back to work and do my thing.”

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