By Thomas Gerbasi

There are a select few athletes in the world of combat sports who you would want by your side if things really got bad and you needed somebody who was going to keep battling until the end, no matter what the odds were. Heavyweight legend Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira should probably be on top of your list, but Stockton lightweight NateDiaz has certainly hit the top ten with a bullet thanks to a series of performances that have shown him to be one of those guys who just won’t be broken.

Forget the 11 pro wins, six of which have come in the UFC; it’s the way he’s fought in those victories, with an attitude that says ‘yeah, you’d better chop off my arms and legs if you think I’m gonna stop moving forward.’ And even in his four defeats (only one of which has ended before the final bell), you get the impression that he didn’t lose, but that he only ran out of time. You can’t teach that, you can’t learn it, and you can’t buy it – but Diaz has it.

“I pretty much train harder than anybody man,” said Diaz on a recent media teleconference to promote his Monday main event bout against Gray Maynard. “Sometimes people feel like I’m losing, but I don’t even feel like that. Maybe when I watch the fight it looks like it, but sometimes that just makes you madder, makes you go harder. If I was #$%$ed up, you would know it, but if I’m all right to go, and that time doesn’t run out, I’m gonna keep going till the end.”

He means it, and you believe him when he says it. It’s an attitude that mixes the confidence of youth and the confidence of knowing you did your due diligence in the gym. And when you add in the experience of someone who’s been there and done that to his corner in the form of brother Nick, a UFC veteran, there’s no question why Diaz is seen as one of the top young lightweights in the sport.

“Nick’s the one who got me started and he’s the reason why I fight,” said Nate of his older brother. “He’s with me all the time working out, telling me what I need to do, and besides me, he’s one of my biggest critics. He’s played a big role and he’s one of my main training partners and coaches.”

Yet despite having Nick in the corner and standouts like Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez as training partners, Diaz the younger still has to perform on fight night, and after back-to-back losses to Clay Guida and Joe Stevenson in the first half of last year, it was clear that he needed to make some adjustments to his game to remain on the right path to the top.

He bounced back in September with a submission win over Melvin Guillard that saw him rise from a first round knockdown to get the victory, but the true test will come in Virginia this Monday, when he faces another wrestler like Guida and Stevenson in Maynard, a three-time Division I All-American. The bout is a rematch of a Diaz submission win back in 2007 when the two were members of The Ultimate Fighter season five cast, a victory Diaz isn’t putting much stock in.

“He’s only gotten better since the last time I fought him,” said Diaz of his opponent. “He was newer then and he’s been doing better, but I’ve been getting better too, so it might not make a difference how much better he’s gotten. I’ve been training hard, so I’m ready to win, ready to fight, and ready to whup his ass.”

If Diaz sounds fired up, it may be because many are looking at the bout as a steppingstone for the unbeaten Maynard en route to a shot at lightweight champion BJ Penn. And you know that Nate Diaz can’t even fathom being someone’s steppingstone.

“They’re talking about him getting a title fight because he’s had so many wins in a row, but if you think about it, I think I’ve been fighting more consistently and have more fights than Gray, so that’s why he has so many wins,” said Diaz, who is 6-2 in the UFC to Maynard’s 6-0 with 1 no contest. “If he fought as many times as I have since the show, he probably would have lost by now too. I think I beat better people than he’s beaten too. He beat Frankie Edgar, who is a really tough guy, but other than that, not any top contenders.”

Diaz even took swipes at one of Maynard’s Xtreme Couture training partners and one of his own former teammates, Tyson Griffin, during the recent teleconference, calling him a “traitor” for switching teams and leaving Northern California for Las Vegas.

“It’s not that personal,” grumbled Diaz. “He (Griffin) was never really my friend; he was a training partnerwho I was down for and he bounced. Whatever. I like him less than people that I gotta fight normally.”

This is Nate Diaz. He says what’s on his mind, doesn’t care who it might rattle, and when all is said and done and the Octagon door closes, he’s going to have a scowl on his face and his hands up and ready to fire. On Monday night, he’s firing at Gray Maynard.

“I keep my eye on everybody in the division, so I’ve been watching him,” said Diaz. “I think he’s sharpened up in little areas, but all in all he does the same type of stuff to win each fight, being the better wrestler than a lot of people. But a fight is a fight, and I just gotta do things right on the night of the fight.”