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01-26-2015, 01:10 AM
T.J. Dillashaw on fighting ‘mentor’ Urijah Faber: ‘It’d be a real tough thing for me to have to kick his ass’
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With the upper tier of the UFC's bantamweight division currently in shambles due to injuries, compelling fights for champion T.J. Dillashaw are hard to find. Regrettably for Dillashaw, the most marketable match-up out there for him right now is probably also one he'd be reluctant to accept: a teammate vs. teammate, student vs. teacher battle against Team Alpha Male captain and stablemate Urijah Faber.
And though Dillashaw is officially slated to rematch Renan Barao at UFC 186, he revealed on Tuesday's edition of The MMA Hour that the UFC explored the idea of the Faber fight before settling on the Brazilian.
"I was never approached with it. I knew it was an idea and it was being talked about, not only by the media and Lorenzo and the matchmakers, but I was told that they called Urijah asking if he would take the fight," Dillashaw said.
"It's just something that we're not really wanting to do right now. I don't feel like it's a situation where we have to do it. I feel like I do have fights that I can fight. I do have (Raphael) Assuncao, I do have Barao to rematch, I'm hoping (Dominick) Cruz gets healthy. You know, I don't want to have to fight my mentor. Urijah is the one who got me in the sport, he's the one who talked me into fighting instead of going into grad school. So it'd be a real tough thing for me to have to do to kick his ass."
After a seemingly endless pursuit for the Sacramento-based squad, Dillashaw became Team Alpha Male's first UFC champion in mid-2014 when he submitted one of MMA's all-time greatest upsets, dominating Barao before finishing the former titleholder with a fifth-round flurry at UFC 173.
Now that he's settled in as champion and already has his first successful title defense against Joe Soto in the books, Dillashaw admitted that he found it "a little weird" that the UFC broached only Faber with the idea and he didn't get a similar phone call. Nonetheless, Dillashaw said that his answer would have remained the same, and that for the time being and the immediate future, a fight for gym supremacy isn't something he and Faber are pursuing.
"Me and Urijah are really good friends. Not just business partners in the gym, but friends," Dillashaw said. "Same as talking with any other friends on the street, we talk about situations that we're going to be involved in. He actually told me when I first got into this sport that this could be a possibility, he saw my talents and that this could be a possibility that they'd want us to fight. So we've been talking about it for a long time.
"We're on the same page. That's just a tough one, man. If they're going to approach us with that, I feel like it's a tough situation to be in and I don't know, we're going to have to see how it goes, (how) Urijah keeps performing, who he keeps knocking off, and we'll get there when we need to. For now, my mind is on finishing Barao and getting him behind me. I'm actually pretty pumped to prove that I'm just that much better than the guy."
231
With the upper tier of the UFC's bantamweight division currently in shambles due to injuries, compelling fights for champion T.J. Dillashaw are hard to find. Regrettably for Dillashaw, the most marketable match-up out there for him right now is probably also one he'd be reluctant to accept: a teammate vs. teammate, student vs. teacher battle against Team Alpha Male captain and stablemate Urijah Faber.
And though Dillashaw is officially slated to rematch Renan Barao at UFC 186, he revealed on Tuesday's edition of The MMA Hour that the UFC explored the idea of the Faber fight before settling on the Brazilian.
"I was never approached with it. I knew it was an idea and it was being talked about, not only by the media and Lorenzo and the matchmakers, but I was told that they called Urijah asking if he would take the fight," Dillashaw said.
"It's just something that we're not really wanting to do right now. I don't feel like it's a situation where we have to do it. I feel like I do have fights that I can fight. I do have (Raphael) Assuncao, I do have Barao to rematch, I'm hoping (Dominick) Cruz gets healthy. You know, I don't want to have to fight my mentor. Urijah is the one who got me in the sport, he's the one who talked me into fighting instead of going into grad school. So it'd be a real tough thing for me to have to do to kick his ass."
After a seemingly endless pursuit for the Sacramento-based squad, Dillashaw became Team Alpha Male's first UFC champion in mid-2014 when he submitted one of MMA's all-time greatest upsets, dominating Barao before finishing the former titleholder with a fifth-round flurry at UFC 173.
Now that he's settled in as champion and already has his first successful title defense against Joe Soto in the books, Dillashaw admitted that he found it "a little weird" that the UFC broached only Faber with the idea and he didn't get a similar phone call. Nonetheless, Dillashaw said that his answer would have remained the same, and that for the time being and the immediate future, a fight for gym supremacy isn't something he and Faber are pursuing.
"Me and Urijah are really good friends. Not just business partners in the gym, but friends," Dillashaw said. "Same as talking with any other friends on the street, we talk about situations that we're going to be involved in. He actually told me when I first got into this sport that this could be a possibility, he saw my talents and that this could be a possibility that they'd want us to fight. So we've been talking about it for a long time.
"We're on the same page. That's just a tough one, man. If they're going to approach us with that, I feel like it's a tough situation to be in and I don't know, we're going to have to see how it goes, (how) Urijah keeps performing, who he keeps knocking off, and we'll get there when we need to. For now, my mind is on finishing Barao and getting him behind me. I'm actually pretty pumped to prove that I'm just that much better than the guy."