‘Mayhem’ Miller Urges Those in Nick Diaz’s Circle to Offer Help: 'He Needs You Now'

While the exact reason for Nick Diaz’s withdrawal from UFC 310 is unclear, there has been speculation that the popular fighter isn’t in a good place in his life right now.

That stems primarily from a video that recently appeared on social media, where a shirtless Diaz appears to be attempting to light grass on fire. At the time, Diaz was booked to face Vicente Luque at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas at UFC 310. It wasn’t much later that Themba Gorimbo was announced as Diaz’s replacement in the welterweight bout.

Jason Miller is quite familiar with struggles outside the cage. The fighter known as “Mayhem” has run afoul of the law on numerous occasions, most recently in August 2023 for allegedly choking a fan. Shortly after that incident, Miller released a statement on Instagram addressing his troubles and how for a long time, it was difficult to ask anyone for help.

Miller seems to be doing better now, and he can empathize with a fellow fighter — even one who was previously a rival — who might be going through some issues of his own. In a recent interview with Helen Yee Sports (h/t MMAFighting.com), Miller offered to help Diaz himself if needed — while urging those in the fighter’s inner circle to step up.

“Listen here, we all saw what we saw and I won’t dwell on it too bad,” Miller said. “I think people in Nick’s life need to gather around. Anybody who ever made some money off him needs to come circle around and help this guy out. We had our beef, whatever, since we were kids, but that doesn’t stop me from extending a helping hand to this guy if he needs it. And if he’s not ready to take a helping hand, you all need to keep on him. The people close to him, his brother, his family, his friends, all you guys that made money off him, he needs you now. He needs a circle back.

“That’s not talking bad on him, it’s a tough sport we’re in and it’s easy to get tripped up in the wrong things. Super easy. And it’s even harder to come up out of that, so my advice is not for him, it’s for the people around him to help him get to a better place in his life.”

A former Strikeforce champion and title contender in the UFC, Diaz returned from a hiatus of more than six years in September 2021, when he suffered a third-round TKO loss to Robbie Lawler at UFC 266. He was initially scheduled to face Luque at UFC Abu Dhabi in August before the bout was canceled. Ahead of that proposed booking, longtime coach Cesar Gracie revealed that he hadn’t been part of Diaz’s camp.

“And so I don’t know what Nick is doing. I know he’s lost a lot of weight and everything, but I don’t really see him training with fighters. And I don’t know what’s going on with that fight,” Gracie said in June.

Months later, it’s all but certain that Diaz won’t be fighting at all in 2024. Miller points out that being away from fighting for long periods can be difficult with nothing to replace that feeling. For “Mayhem,” his life got better when he sought help, and he thinks that Diaz could be in a similar position.

“S—t, I wish somebody would have done it for me earlier. They did and I finally took the help and now my life keeps getting better and better... I went through all this hard stuff with substances. It’s super easy to get tripped up in, it’s so easy, especially when you’re used to the bright lights and crazy, exciting—the fight is like nothing else,” he said.

“… There’s something in you that once you have this super exciting thing in your life, and if you’re not doing it all the time, then it’s easy to slip into something that gives you that feeling really quickly and I don’t think that we should judge people for that. I think that we should help them up out of that when we can.”