What’s the story?
TJ Dillashaw lost his UFC bantamweight belt early last year to Dominick Cruz, and has being eyeing up another title shot since then, all while beating contenders John Lineker and Raphael Assuncao decisively.
In the meantime, former teammate Cody Garbrandt won the belt, and there has been some bad blood between the two. Garbrandt says he knocked Dillashaw out in training, while Dillashaw says he would regularly beat Garbrandt up during his time at the gym.
In case you didn’t know...
TJ Dillashaw left Team Alpha Male in 2015, and there has been animosity between him and his ex-teammates, particularly team leader Urijah Faber and current champion Cody Garbrandt. Dillashaw left for Elevation Fight Team in Denver, Colorado to train with famed striking coach Duane Ludwig.
The heart of the matter
On the UFC Unfiltered podacast, Garbrandt spok about Dillashaw and had nothing nice to say on his former friend.
“I don’t mind whooping TJ’s ass. He was a cancer to our team. I’ll make the (expletive) personal too”
“I’ll spare everyone $60 on buying the pay-per-view and put out the video of me knocking his ass out”
Dillashaw replied to Garbrandt’s comments while speaking on Chael Sonnen’s show, “You’re welcome”
“I know I’m in his head. Not only am I in his head, but I’m a better fighter. I’m more well rounded and I’ve got more dangerous weapons. He’s got a hard right hand and he's fast but I’m going to push him and I’m going to break him.”
“We trained for at least a couple of years I think. It’s never all about the practices, but if we scored it, I’d definitely be the majority winner there. I would win 75 percent of the time.”
There are certainly strong words being exchanged between to the two, and it remains to be seen if they will fight in the near future.
What’s next?
New champion Garbrandt has two potential fights on the horizon, an immediate rematch with Dominick Cruz or a new fight with TJ Dillashaw, both fights are exciting prospect but one could argue it would be better for the bantamweight division to have a fight we haven’t seen before, between two fighters that don’t like each other, rather than a rematch.
Both options are possible as Dominick Cruz is more than deserving of a rematch as he was number one at bantamweight for a long time, and TJ Dillashaw has just dominantly beaten the next two condenters in the division.
Sportskeeda’s take
Everyone loves a good story, and a fight between Cody Garbrandt and TJ Dillashaw certainly has that, so the UFC will most likely take that option, and the animosity will certainly result in the fight of the year contender we’d love to see.
