Nate Diaz has a boxing opponent, and he comes from a part of the fight world most UFC diehards only catch in highlight clips. Former OKTAGON MMA middleweight champion Kerim Engizek has announced that he’s set to face Diaz in a boxing match. Word spread Monday after the news landed on r/MMA. The date and location are still TBD, so for now this is a fight with two names and nothing else attached.
That last part matters. Announcements like this have a habit of sounding enormous on a Monday afternoon and then going quiet for months. Until somebody puts a city, an arena and a calendar date next to it, I’m treating it as a bout that’s been declared and not yet built. Engizek did the declaring, and he did it with his chest, which I respect. Now the paperwork has to catch up.
Why Diaz still moves the needle
Diaz carries a lot of history in this sport. He’s the guy who coined the phrase “BMF” years ago, and the UFC liked it so much that it turned it into an actual belt. The first fight for that strap was Diaz against Jorge Masvidal at UFC 244 in 2019, and Masvidal won it. Since then the title has bounced between Masvidal, Justin Gaethje, Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira. Holloway is the only one who ever defended it.
The timing on this is almost funny. Oliveira puts that BMF title on the line against Diego Lopes in the UFC 335 main event on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. So the belt built on Diaz’s catchphrase headlines a UFC card in December while Diaz himself is off lining up a boxing match with a European MMA champion. You couldn’t script the split screen any better.
There’s another Diaz echo from this past weekend. Rafael dos Anjos, who beat Diaz during the run that earned him a UFC lightweight title shot, took off his gloves in the Octagon after a TKO loss to Alexander Hernandez at UFC 332 on Oct. 3. The referee stopped it at 3:12 of Round 2. Dos Anjos is 41, that was his fourth straight loss, and he hasn’t officially announced his retirement, but the glove gesture had everybody talking. One of Diaz’s old rivals may be walking away the same week Diaz picks up a new one.
What we still don’t know
Basically everything past the names. The sources don’t include a weight, a round count or a broadcast partner. They also don’t say which promotion runs the show. Engizek built his reputation at middleweight in OKTAGON, and the size question is going to dominate every conversation about this fight the second it gets real details.
My take: I love it. Give me a crossover between a guy who ruled a big European promotion and a guy who invented the most marketable phrase in modern UFC history, and I’m buying a ticket before I check the price. Diaz brings the name, the attitude and the built-in audience. Engizek gets the biggest stage of his career and a chance to make a whole lot of American fans learn how to spell his name. What I need now is a date, because “TBD” doesn’t sell a single pay-per-view. Lock it in, put them on a stage together and let the face-off tell us whether this thing has real heat.
