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Nick Diaz: The first modern MMA fighter

16 years ago, Robbie Lawler was one of the most hyped young prospects in the UFC. In 2002, he hit Tiki Ghosn so hard, his memory short-circuited.

“They stopped it because of a cut,” Ghosn famously recalled, moments after his cornermen managed to scrape his corpse off the canvas. Lawler was fast, powerful, and scary.

Nick Diaz didn’t give a damn. Or, at least, he did a convincing job of pretending not to. So when Diaz and Lawler met for the first time in 2004, Diaz, regarded as a submission grappler with suspect standup, proceeded to give Lawler one of the UFC’s first boxing lessons.