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.