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While the UFC prides itself on being “as real as it gets” and certainly produces action inside the Octagon that is a legitimate sport and not staged like professional wrestling, that doesn’t mean the MMA juggernaut doesn’t capitalise on potential storylines between the fighters in order to sell PPVs.
Sure, the UFC isn’t Game of Thrones, but a common story we’ve seen over the years that’s led to some massive fights has been the story of betrayal. Whether its fighters switching camps or famous trainers bringing in new fighters under the nose of their old ones, nearly every time it’s happened it’s been big news. Here are five of the most shocking betrayals in UFC history.
#1 The ballad of Jones and Evans
Cast your mind back to 2008 for a second. That summer the UFC signed an unknown youngster called Jon Jones to step in as a late replacement in a prelim fight, while former TUF champion Rashad Evans picked up the biggest win of his career to date by knocking out UFC legend Chuck Liddell.
Fast-forward to 2010 and the two men were teammates. Jones had been bought into Greg Jackson’s camp after the coach spotted the potential he had, and Evans – Jackson’s star pupil and the now-former UFC Light-Heavyweight champion – was only happy to take the youngster under his wing.
By the time 2011 began it was clear that Jones was perhaps the best prospect in the weight class, while Evans was scheduled to fight champion Mauricio Rua in an attempt to regain his lost title. However, Rashad blew his knee out prior to UFC 128, so Jones was offered the title shot instead.
With Rashad’s blessing, he took the chance and subsequently destroyed Rua to take the title for himself. When he was asked about Rashad, Jones told the MMA media that he’d be happy to fight his training partner if he were asked.
Suddenly, it seemed like the world was against Evans – well, the world of Jackson’s MMA that is. Despite having seniority over the new champion, Rashad found himself ostracised by his own team and coaches, and when it was clear that he was on a collision course with Jones, he was swiftly forced out of the Albuquerque-based team and had to form his own camp in Boca Raton. When the fight eventually took place, Jones defeated Evans in a lopsided judges’ decision.
Years later Rashad remarked that he wished things had gone down differently and that he’d largely buried the hatchet with Jones and Jackson, although “things would never truly be the same”. Is it any wonder given he came off on the wrong end of one of the UFC’s greatest betrayals?
#2 Jackson brings in GSP, says goodbye to Diego
If anyone was wondering who was really to blame in the Jones/Evans spat, perhaps they shouldn’t have looked much further than Greg Jackson. A tremendous coach, Jackson was also no stranger to abandoning a longtime student for a more promising prospect. The first example? Around four years prior to the Jones/Evans incident, a similar story was being told in Albuquerque involving Welterweights Diego Sanchez and Georges St-Pierre.
Diego had been Jackson’s biggest star as the original season of TUF exploded into the conscience of MMA fans, and realistically, the first TUF winner was the man who put the Albuquerque camp on the map and helped to lead to the UFC success of the likes of Evans and Keith Jardine a few months later.
By the time 2006 came around, Sanchez was one of the UFC’s most recognisable stars and he was on a huge win streak, 17-0 with six wins in the Octagon. It seemed like only a matter of time before he received a title shot against new champion Georges St-Pierre, who won the title in the latter months of the year.
Instead, GSP was invited to train with Jackson’s camp on a part-time basis, clearly stepping on Diego’s toes. Diego himself has stated that the focus suddenly moved away from him and he believed that Jackson wanted him to drop to 155lbs to avoid a fight with his new prize student. Eventually, things came to a head and Diego departed the team he’d been with his entire career to start afresh in San Diego.
It was a move that didn’t really pay off, and despite dropping to 155lbs and gaining a title shot there, Diego never really fulfilled that early potential. He’s since returned to Jackson’s camp but has been unable to recapture the early magic he had. Maybe that’s something to do with the way he was treated there a decade ago.
#3 Dillashaw’s no Alpha Male
This article almost feels timely given the situation between TJ Dillashaw and his former team, Team Alpha Male (TAM) is at its most volatile. In this case, the betrayal also involved a coach, namely kickboxing savant Duane ‘Bang’ Ludwig.
Essentially, the story began in late 2012. Team Alpha Male – a team made up largely of smaller, grappling-based fighters and formed by Urijah Faber – needed help on their striking game, so Faber brought in Ludwig to be the team’s new head coach.
The results were pretty instant – Faber and other TAM fighters such as Joseph Benavidez and Chad Mendes suddenly displayed massively improved kickboxing, but perhaps the greatest recipient of Ludwig’s teachings was prospect TJ Dillashaw.
Early 2014 saw Faber fail in an attempt to claim the UFC Bantamweight Title from champion Renan Barao, but where the leader of the Alpha Males failed, Dillashaw succeeded just a few months later, dethroning Barao with a Ludwig-styled striking masterclass.
The California native was on top of the world, but it was a world that quickly splintered apart. Apparently tired of working under the Alpha Male banner, Ludwig split with the team in late 2015 and went back to Colorado. And to make the split even bitterer, he took Dillashaw with him.
Since then, word has come from Team Alpha Male that Dillashaw was a “terrible” training partner who set out to injure sparring partners, and Faber has stated that he felt betrayed by Dillashaw leaving the team to side with Ludwig.
With Dillashaw losing his title to Dominick Cruz – who in turn lost it to Team Alpha Male’s Cody Garbrandt – we should see the situation finally end at UFC 217, and Garbrandt seems to be gunning for the man who seemingly betrayed his mentor and his teammates.
#4 Chuck wants to fight Tito
It was the storyline that almost pushed the UFC into the mainstream around a year before the first season of TUF ever aired – the story of two friends who had supposedly formed a pact that meant they’d never fight, only one of them decided to break that pact, and somehow found that the majority of fans were siding with him, not against him. I’m talking, of course, about Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.
The story began in the early days of the Zuffa-led UFC, when Ortiz was the biggest star in the company and the reigning Light-Heavyweight champion, while Liddell was Ortiz’s training partner and one of the top up-and-comers in the weight class. The two had supposedly agreed not to fight, but Liddell was on such a hot run that a title shot was hard to deny him.
Ortiz for his part felt utterly betrayed by the idea that Liddell was willing to fight him, while Liddell simply played down the friendship and claimed they were merely sparring partners, and he’d always gotten the better of Ortiz in those sparring sessions.
When Tito decided to refuse the fight, the fans immediately sided with Liddell, feeling that Ortiz was ducking his former friend and never really considering that Tito could’ve been sincere in his feelings. Eventually – after the bad blood finally boiled over – the two men fought, with Liddell winning by first-round knockout.
The hatchet wasn’t buried, however, and even after Liddell beat his former friend on a second occasion two years later, a third fight was planned in 2010 before Ortiz withdrew citing a back injury.
Supposedly, Chuck and Tito have now made up and are on good terms again, but it’s hard to tell given both men are firmly in happy retirement these days. It’s a story that’s really tricky to judge who was completely in the right – you get the feeling that the truth was somewhere in the middle, but from Ortiz’s point of view, it was a huge betrayal.
#5 Randy Couture abandons the UFC
Finally, it’s a story of betrayal not between two fighters, but between one legendary fighter and the company who helped him become that legend. It’s arguable that, in the pre-Conor McGregor era, no fighter was thrown quite as many bones as Randy Couture. While it’s impossible to deny his greatness as a fighter, it’s also easy to argue that a lot of his success came from opportunities given to him by the UFC.
After all, when he was beaten for the UFC Heavyweight title by Ricco Rodriguez in 2002 – his second loss in a row – it was the UFC who then put him in with Chuck Liddell for the Interim Light-Heavyweight title in his first fight at 205lbs. And after Liddell took the Light-Heavyweight title from him in 2006 and he retired, it was the UFC who granted him an immediate Heavyweight title shot against Tim Sylvia when he decided to return in 2007.
Couture walked out on the UFC later that year in an attempt to promote a fight against PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko under the Affliction banner – a massively disrespectful move given his treatment by the UFC – but when that was stopped via a lawsuit, he came right back into the UFC fold and was immediately given big-time main events again against the likes of Brock Lesnar, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Mark Coleman.
When he retired for good in 2011, the UFC appeared to have buried all the bad feelings and offered Couture a job with their network partner Fox as an analyst... only for ‘Captain America’ to abandon ship again and join the UFC’s biggest competitor, Bellator MMA on Spike TV. It was the final betrayal in a laundry list of them from Couture against the company that helped him become the star he is today.
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