Olympic silver medal winner Esquiva Falcao is now a target for the Nate Diaz Army.
A week or so back, Falcao made headlines when he detailed a recent sparring session with Diaz, who is actively preparing for his professional boxing debut against Youtube star turned boxer Jake Paul - scheduled for August 5th in Texas.
Next month, Falcao will fight for the vacant IBF world title when he collides with Vincenzo Gualtieri in Germany.
Falcao boxed for twelve rounds with Diaz.
He explained that Diaz was gassing during the spar, which forced the unbeaten boxer to hold back a bit.
“At first I thought he was tired, and in the end it looked like he was dying,” Falcao said, according to MMAFighting.com. “His fighting style is crazy. You look at him and say, ‘Oh, he’s tired,’ and then we started sparring. [Coach] Robert [Garcia] told me in the second round, ‘He’s tired already, hold back a little bit and keep the rhythm so he does at least 10 rounds.’
“I held back and kept boxing, and we did 12 rounds. He was tired, but taking punches and throwing, too. [He] is bad, [he] is bad, but since he’s too heavy — he’s overweight, probably around 220 pounds or more — and I’m the only big guy in the gym, I had to do it. But I liked doing it.”
Diaz’s longtime teammate, Chris Avila, disputes Falcao's version of the events.
“Bro, that guy got f----- up,” Avila said told The MMA Hour. “Yeah, we just got back — we were out in LA and we went to a boxing gym, this guy’s like a silver medalist out of Brazil and whatever. He’s 30-0, he’s fighting for a world title next week. And then boxers are like that — they’re pretty dumb. They’re passive. They’re really passive.
“So Nate sparred this guy, did 12 rounds. Bro, he got f------ up. He lost every round, then afterward he immediately goes to the coach, ‘Oh, I’m cutting weight, that’s why I didn’t look too good.’ And then you see on his [Instagram] story, it’s in Portuguese so we had somebody translate — and he was talking sh!t.
“The next day we went back and the coach was like, ‘Yo, he wants to spar you. So I sparred him, and then he lost every round again — and he still said goes and talks some more shit in Portuguese. But we didn’t know until after all the sparring. Anyways, to that guy, f--- that guy too.”