Video of Nate Diaz getting into a physical altercation with a contestant on the Russian reality show similar to The Ultimate Fighter, “ALF Reality” surfaced on Wednesday. Diaz was a coach on the series alongside heavyweight champion Jon Jones.
Jones assisted in breaking up the melee and had a front row view of the incident. On Thursday, Jones broke his silence on the situation and detailed what transpired.
“We had one of our young fighters, a guy named Zalik, he was playing with Nate. He wanted to play fight with Nate. Nate kind of came in a little bit on edge. I think he had some previous beef with some Russian fighters, so he was a little bit on edge when he got here,” Jones explained.
“Play fighting with Nate was not the best idea. It became serious right away and we had to replace Nate.”
"It got serious right away, play fighting with Nate Diaz was a bad idea."Jon Jones, who's currently serving as a captain on the Russian spin-off of the TUF reality show in Thailand, told Red Corner MMA about the conflict betwen Nate Diaz and one of the fighters from his team.… pic.twitter.com/HQ0gUctVmu
— Red Corner MMA (@RedCorner_MMA) May 22, 2025
The altercation began during introductions when a contestant got in Diaz’ face. The two exchanged words and the contestant appeared to try to put his hands on the UFC veteran. Moments later, Diaz slapped him escalating the situation.
Following the incident, Diaz left the show and abruptly flew back home to California despite efforts by the production team to have him continue filming.
Jones spoke about the unpredictability of the reality series. Clips have been released of fist fights in the fighter house and other incidents of chaos.
“I’ve been around the Bushido spirit a long time, that martial arts spirit where everybody has a certain degree of kind of like certain rules you don’t cross like a marital arts spirit and everything. I don’t think there’s a lot of that here,” Jones said.
“Some guys are like warriors and some guys are really just kind of like street fighters. There’s insults. There’s weapons. This show is, there’s nothing like it. There’s really nothing like it.”
