There was no love lost between Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz ahead of UFC 207, but the new champion is on the brink of an even bigger grudge match. Garbrandt will likely make his first title defense against teammate-turned-enemy T.J. Dillashaw, and the matchup is as exciting for its stylistic elements as it is for the pre-fight heat.
Garbrandt won the title from Dominick Cruz at UFC 207, beating the lineal champion that Dillashaw lost to back in January. Few expected the heavy-handed Garbrandt to be able to keep up with Cruz, but he turned in a star-making performance in which he looked near unbeatable.
On the same card, former champ Dillashaw made easy work of the dangerous John Lineker. He called out the winner of Cruz vs. Garbrandt after the fight, and Garbrandt seems ready to shut him up.
“I don’t mind whoopin’ T.J.’s ass,” Garbrandt said on the UFC Unfiltered podcast. “He was a cancer to our team and having what he tried to do – destroy it – to make that s**t personal too. I’ll spare everybody 60 bucks to buy the pay-per-view and put out the video of me knocking his ass out when I was 1-0. 1-0. He wasn’t saying that he made me cry in practice. That motherf**ker never made me cry. I wasn’t the one looking at the ceiling, being on my back looking at the ceiling, knocked out. So he’s just trying to do anything – the guy’s a horrible trash talker. Horrible.”
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Dillashaw came up through Team Alpha Male, but things grew complicated when his striking coach Duane Ludwig left the team and moved to Colorado. For a while Dillashaw remained in Sacramento with the team that he had come up with, but last year he decided to move full-time to Colorado to train with Team Elevation and be closer to his head coach Ludwig.
His departure was met with very public criticism and a falling out with Urijah Faber. Though many of the team maintains positive relationships with Dillashaw, Cody Garbrandt is not one of them.
“I would get satisfaction from whoopin’ his ass, that’s for sure,” said Garbrandt. “Just for what he did to the team. He sold out. He’s a sellout. He sold his friends, everybody that got him there. He forgot who got him to where he was at. Saw a little bit of money and f**kin’ ran. Ran away. But there was me always there, the uncrowned champ. I was the uncrowned champ when he was there."
With Dillashaw as the number one contender, and the beef between the two as real as it gets, it would make all the sense in the world for the UFC to book the fight. Garbrandt has, however, expressed interest in getting a "money fight" against the likes of Jose Aldo and Conor McGregor at a higher weight class.
“I’m gonna sit down with Dana, Sean, and my management team and coaches and see what’s the best fight for me. I just want to enjoy this but I’m the champion now and it’s my job and duty and my responsibility to defend it against what fight makes the most sense for me. I don’t know, we’ll see. I believe that T.J. will be a good fight, a good storyline… I’ve just got to weigh in with the UFC and my management team and make the best decision for us both, to make money for everybody.”