We propose a new approach to outage probability analysis of predetection maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity reception in Nakagami- m fading channels. We generalize prior work in that we consider L independent cochannel interferers with arbitrary powers and fading parameters as well as the effects of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Our approach results in a general expression for outage probability under very broad assumptions. Moreover, our approach leads to a closed-form expression for outage probability in most cases of interest. We also provide numerical results that demonstrate the performance improvement obtained through MRC diversity combining in the presence of cochannel interferers.