Urijah Faber on Dillashaw: He & His Family Knows He Has Been Cheating

Urijah Faber has shed some more insight into the doping of former Team Alpha Male protégé T.J. Dillashaw, which “The California Kid” alleges has been going on for much longer than the 2019 test failure.

T.J. Dillashaw’s positive drug test following his 2019 loss to Henry Cejudo at UFC on ESPN 1 has been well documented, especially in the lead-up to last week’s UFC Vegas 32 event. Perhaps the biggest question heading into Dillashaw’s return from a two-year suspension was how he would look in his first fight back in what many believed to be his first fight as a “clean” fighter in an untold number of years.

Ultimately, Dillashaw looked good enough to eke out a victory over Sandhagen in an ultra-competitive bout. Among the spectators of Saturday’s event was Dillashaw’s former mentor at Team Alpha Male, Uriah Faber, who believed Dillashaw looked like the T.J. of old, and also shared his theory on why Dillashaw ever cheated in the first place (h/t MMA Fighting).

“He looked like the same guy,” Faber explained in a recent interview with Submission Radio. “I mean, look, in the aftermath of having the guy on the team and then leaving the team and me always being dark on everything, I know a lot more stuff than most people do about the whole situation.

“But the one thing I can say is, the reason he’s cheating is because he’s a competitor. Like, not a fair competitor. He’s a cheap-shot guy. He’s a, you know, whatever it is. But the guy’s whole intent and focus is to win. And if someone’s a cheater because they don’t believe in themselves, that’s one thing. But if somebody does an actual assessment of what they need to gain, whether it be conditioning or strength or whatnot, and then cheat because of that, there’s a big difference.”

Faber also stated in this interview that many fighters on the team who formed a strong relationship with Dillashaw had disclosed to him how long Dillashaw had been cheating, and it allegedly dates back much further than 2019.

Of course, Cody Garbrandt was the first person to make this accusation against Dillashaw long before there was any USADA violation, and recently UFC Bantamweight Champion Aljamain Sterling also shared that he was informed of Dillashaw’s chronic cheating. Dillashaw has repeatedly reminded the public that past samples dating back years have been re-tested by USADA, and there has been no trace of contamination in any of them.

Nevertheless, there remains a common perception out there that it has been widely known that Dillashaw has been cheating for a very long time, and Faber is among those who hold this belief.

“He knows. His family knows. Everybody knows what he was doing.”

“It’s not my business to put anything out there. Other people have gone out and said stuff about whether he was or wasn’t. I know that he came to my team as a lifetime athlete who wrestled since he was a little kid and wrestled in college and worked out really, really hard and couldn’t bust 143 pounds, and he was complaining about it,” Faber said.

Faber has also shared that he was offered a fight against TJ Dillashaw, which he claims was rejected by the former two-time UFC champion.