UFC bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt and former team member and (ex-bantamweight champion) T.J. Dillashaw have a lot of beef.
And as anyone who has as even a little interest in combat sports will tell you: beef sells. Cody Garbrandt and T.J Dillashaw will get to address said beef and don their 4-ounces gloves when they step into the octagon with Garbrandt’s bantamweight title later this year. The fight is scheduled after Season 25 of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF), when the pair will go head to head as coaches. The two were selected as coaches to
The backstory to that beef began when Dillashaw left Team Alpha Male (TAM) for Dwayne Ludwig’s Team Elevation in Colorado. Garbrandt, among others at TAM reacted negatively towards their former gym buddy, which Dillashaw claims he could never truly understand. Garbrandt’s offence taken to the former bantamweight champion’s departure from the world-famous gym left Dillashaw truly scratching his head.
T.J Dillashaw spoke to the Fight Society podcast recently, saying that Cody Garbrandt’s recent diatribes and aggression against him came as a result of trying to impress gym leader and “daddy” Urijah Faber:
“Urijah is Cody’s daddy. Cody can’t make any decisions without Urijah,” said Dillashaw. “Urijah’s involved with everything. That’s why Urijah was mad when I left. He likes to be in control. He wants to be the top dog. I hardly even know Cody. It’s kind of comical that Cody wanted to get mad about this whole thing cause I hardly even know the guy. He was on his way in when I was on my way out.
“He was on the team when everyone was making fun of him for who he was. Now everyone’s got his back cause he’s doing great. He’s doing good for the team and getting a good name out there. But really the beef with Cody is just comical because it shouldn’t concern him at all. Just because it involves Urijah, he wants to get all riled up and fluff out his feathers and act like a tough guy. I expected this from Cody. He’s a hothead and just for him to not really be able to express himself mentally but just get all worked up.”
Dillashaw is quite content to dish out as much as he takes in terms of the war on words between both men, yet there seems to be a distinct honesty in his dislike for the man who took the belt he lost to Dominick Cruz in 2016 at UFC Fight Night 81:
“It’s not so much learn but just reinstated what I’ve known about the guy that he’s a complete idiot. He’s not very smart and he’s hot headed. That’s it. There’s not much more behind that other than getting your haircut, making sure your eyebrows are lined up and being a hot head. That’s all he’s really got.”