Nick Diaz put a licking on brawler Evangelista Santos, but the prefight wasn't engulfed by the champ's trademark trash talk. Diaz is genuine. Just because he rips most opponents doesn't mean that it's some sort of ploy to fire himself up or sell the fight. So when he was asked if not ripping "Cyborg" was a byproduct of maturing, Diaz answered with his typical brutal honesty.
"No, not at all," Diaz said (1:22 mark). "[In the past] I had to [expletive] with people. We had something between us."
Diaz said he respected Cyborg as well as past opponents like Robbie Lawler. That wasn't the case with guys like KJ Noons, Scott Smith and Frank Shamrock.
"That was that and now it's over with. Sometimes you get into some conflict and that's happened to me more than once, so now everyone feels as if I 've gone and matured or grown up or somethin, but that's just the way fighting is," Diaz said. "If you're going to make it personal, then it's really going to be a personal thing. It's already personal. The guy who wins is going to go on and make a lot more money."
Make no mistake about it, the "old" Diaz will return if Showtime/Strikeforce decides to make a fight against Paul Daley. Daley likes to fan the flames and already has his own bad guy tag after his exile from the UFC for sucker punching Josh Koscheck following their fight at UFC 113.
Diaz sounds confident that he'll be fine against the British slugger.
"I see myself putting punches on him," Diaz said. "Maybe him trying to take me down too and getting caught in a choke. He could run from me and I could run him down. I'll run him down and take him down and beat him on the ground. I could see that fight going a lot of different ways."
Diaz knows Daley's reputation as a one-dimensional fighter.
"I'm not really impressed with Paul Daley as a mixed martial artist," Diaz said. "He's got great standup and he's got good knockout power. I'm sure he knows what's going to happen if he steps in there and fights me."
He re-stated that he'll fight Jason Miller, but he needs to get paid a little extra if he's going to meet the 185 pounder at middleweight.
"This is hard stuff. I train hard everyday. I work more than eight hours days every day," Diaz said. "And they're harder than your eight-hour days holding a camera. It's different. You can't do this, what I do. I think that money talks."
There you have it. Diaz drops a little trash on all us media tough guys. He's earned the right to say whatever he wants. He keeps backing it up in the cage and putting on entertaining fights. Strikeforce hit a home run when it re-signed Diaz.
Eight fighters from this past weekend's "Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg" event were issued medical suspensions, and three face layoffs of up to six months or more. 
After a good run in the WEC, Donald Cerrone is entering the UFC with plenty of experience in hyping a fight. The "Cowboy" always has a lot to say, but Paul Kelly told the Canadian Press that he's not interested in going back and forth with the former WEC lightweight champ.