Nate Diaz clarifies Twitter callout of UFC: ‘They had me doing a little run-around'

Nate Diaz caused a minor stir in late July when he tweeted his apparent displeasure with the UFC the day after appearing on Conan.

After taping a segment alongside a pre-recorded message of a trash-talking Conor McGregor, Diaz announced that the "UFC played me again," accompanied by the hashtag "trust nobody." However, on Friday, Diaz chalked the situation up to a simple misunderstanding.

"It was just some behind-the-scenes stuff that they were not telling me about and hiding from me," Diaz said on a UFC 202 conference call. "They had me doing a little run-around. I was just trying to get home and train. I didn't want to be out there for that long. It all worked out though. I had training out there and it was just like [McGregor] said, it's a distraction when you're out there.

"Like, f*ck this sh*t. I mean, that stuff is all good and fun after a fight, but before the fight it's like, I'm not in the mood to sit here and answer silly ass questions and play silly ass little sketches and roles when I've got this sh*t going on. But it all got worked out and everything is all good."

Diaz and McGregor are scheduled to rematch their infamous first bout on Aug. 20 at UFC 202, and this time around it is Diaz who is hitting the media circuits while McGregor largely stays out of the limelight. After appearing on Conan, Diaz also filmed a man-on-the-street sketch for Jimmy Kimmel Live! that saw him prank unsuspecting fight fans who picked McGregor to win.

For his part, McGregor has gone through this song and dance before, and he is happy to see Diaz finally get his due after spending over a decade in the game.

"I know it's something he's always wanted to be doing," McGregor said. "I wonder how feeling doing it, because I know it ain't easy doing all of that. It certainly takes from what we are and what we do, and as much as maybe people don't realize it, it is very distracting. But I'm happy to see him up there doing his thing. He's doing well, I think, up there. I came in and gave him a little help there on the Conan show, but I thought the Kimmel one was pretty funny.

"Look, we deserve everything. We go in and put it on the line, more so than any human being on the planet, and that's for all of you throughout all of entertainment. So we deserve to on all of this. We deserve our names in lights. We deserve absolutely everything for what we do here. Uneducated people and people who could never even lace up a glove can come up and talk about what we do and what should've done and what we should not have done. But again, they're people who could not even touch us, not even hold our spit bucket, so I'm happy to see it."

When asked if he was enjoying the experience, Diaz took a more lukewarm approach, saying that he was happy for the opportunities but admitting it wasn't exactly his favorite thing in the world to be doing while he prepares for the biggest fight of his professional career.

"It's not like something I was losing sleep over trying to get into, but when they call and the opportunities are there, you might as well take them," Diaz said. "Because all of the marketing gets bigger. I didn't want to do none of it, but I didn't want to look back and say f*ck, I should've done that. So I'm just doing what I gotta do to get by, get my things cracking, get some things going."