Noons Doesn’t Think He Lost Diaz Fight, But Moving on Regardless

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K.J. Noons disagrees with the judges who awarded Nick Diaz a unanimous decision after their entertaining five-round Strikeforce bout last October.

“I didn’t even think I lost the fight,” Noons said recently on the Sherdog Radio Network’s “Beatdown” show. “Only in opinion, right? In some people’s eyes. Nah, you know what? I guess the judges saw it wrong -- I mean, different, and you just have to get better. I’m moving back down to 155 [pounds], so I’m happy.”

Diaz defended his Strikeforce welterweight title with scores of 48-47, 49-47 and 49-46 in his favor. However, Noons believes he outstruck the champion.

“Let’s just take emotion and opinions out of it and put hard facts on the table,” Noons said. “Who won the fight by statistics? If you go by who did the more damage to the other person? Strikes landed?”

The initial CompuStrike stats on the fight did have Noons landing more strikes than Diaz, but the company corrected those figures, which it said were the result of a system glitch. The final CompuStrike numbers had Diaz landing more strikes. FightMetric also had Diaz with the advantage.

Noons, however, feels he won the fight three rounds to two. Diaz has since gone on to earn a UFC welterweight title shot against Georges St. Pierre in October, and Noons doesn’t begrudge him the opportunity.

“He won a couple more fights, so he definitely put himself in a position to be fighting for that,” Noons said. “That’s a fight people want to see. I’m just saying I felt like [our] fight was different. Am I going to cry about it now? No.”

Of course, Noons stopped Diaz the first time they met in November 2007. He said a third encounter is “probably” in the future, but for now he’s concentrating on Jorge Masvidal, whom he fights Saturday at Strikeforce “Overeem vs. Werdum.” With a win, Noons expects to get a shot at Strikeforce lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez.

“I think since Masvidal beat Billy [Evangelista], that was one of the top guys in Strikeforce,” Noons said. “From what I was told, this is a number-one contender fight. So whoever wins this gets a shot at Gilbert.”

Masvidal has split his last four fights, but Noons is complimentary of his game.

“I think he’s a great standup fighter,” Noons said. “I think he’s good all-around. I’m just training for everything, but I don’t know. We’ll see how the fight turns out when we get in there and mix it up. I think he’s pretty confident in his standup game. If he wanted to, he could stand up the whole time, but I think he’s going to mix it up and I’m ready for that. I’m actually ready to mix it up too.”

Listen to the full interview (beginning at 1:26:05).