Vegetarian Top Fighters

Many Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters are committing to a vegetarian diet, including top welterweight (heavier than lightweight, but lighter than middleweight) fighters Jon Fitch, Jake Shields, Nick and Nate Diaz, and Mac Danzig (who is vegan). Shields has been vegetarian his entire life, the Diaz brothers since their teenage years, and Fitch is a recent vegetarian, influenced both by his wife and Shields’ 15 consecutive fight wins. “You recover faster. Nobody trains as hard as we do,” says Nick Diaz. Mac Danzig, who worked at an animal sanctuary when he was 20, was the Season 6 winner of “The Ultimate Fighter,” and says he became vegan for ethical, rather than sport, reasons.