Diaz suffered arm injury before fight with Silva; stopped punching for two weeks

Nick Diaz's bread and butter in the cage is his effective "kill you with a thousand cuts" style boxing, that stresses sheer volume above power. 

Despite his normally effective boxing, the former Strikeforce welterweight champion rarely unleashed his signature high-volume style during a loss to Anderson Silva on Saturday night, and there seems to be a pretty good explanation for it.

"I couldn't really throw any punches until the fight, because I thought if it was gonna tear something or pull something, I would just get through it in the fight," Diaz said after the fight, according to MMAFighting.com's Marc Raimondi. "I didn't want to do it before the fight and have it swell up on me and go out there with nothing."

Diaz wasn't making excuses following the fight, and refused to blame the injury for his failure.

"It was actually locking up on me and I couldn't punch with it," Diaz said. "But I came out to fight and it wasn't an issue. But I was worried it was going to be, because every time I'd throw a punch in the last couple days it would lock up, it would stick."

Diaz needed a cortisone shot before the fight, and may require surgery on possible bone spurs or fragments in his left elbow.

"He said we can go in there and have surgery and take something out of there," Diaz said. "Something like that. But I haven't really looked into it too much, I'm not really into having surgeries. I don't know. We'll have to see about that. If I'm not punching anybody, why do I need surgery?"