a blog by Brian
When will the feud between Team Alpha Male and its former member, TJ Dillashaw, end? The most likely of scenarios, never.
A document dump, on par with wiki-leaks (for MMA fans), has hit Instagram.
Urijah Faber and Cody Garbrandt took to social media yesterday to, in their eyes, expose former teammate, TJ Dillashaw, for lying on a few hot button issues. Yet, this is not the first time the Alpha Males have spoken out against Dillashaw in the past few months. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience (Episode #1008) with Urijah Faber, Garbrandt broke the story of why TAM coach and former Ultimate Fighter winner, Chris Holdsworth, has put his career on hiatus. Holdsworth made an abrupt stop to professional fighting in 2014, due to what was described at the time as a accumulation of severe concussions. The former TUF winner, according to Garbrandt, fought his final professional bout with a concussion due to an alleged "cheap shot" from Dillashaw. The story behind Dillashaw and his gym antics was, until recently, simply seen as an ultra competitive guy. Holdsworth recently went on Ariel Helwani's show, The MMA Hour, and revealed his side of the story.
Even before this (which shocked the likes of Joe Rogan) the Alpha Males, while on the UFCs Ultimate Fighter series, hinted at the perceived manipulative ways of the former bantamweight champion. Dillashaw made claims that he was kicked off his former team, a claim that Urijah Faber took exception with.
Now, a day away from the fight, Urijah posted this video to his Instagram account.
Preceding all of this was a short video that had been talked about more than it had been seen. One of many statements made against the Denver based fighter was the existence of a sparring video, in which, Cody Garbrandt and TJ Dillashaw are doing a simple days training. In this short clip, it has been described that Garbrandt landed a punch that knocked Dillashaw out. This was an extremely contentious point between the two. Dillashaw denied its existence on multiple occasions.
This all leads to something people, trust me. After all the verbal jousting, Garbrandt released the video, in question, yesterday. The clip is short, but reveals the exact instance that Justin Bucholz (Team Alpha Male Head Coach) and Garbrandt described.
This rivalry is exactly what new ownership and the modern age UFC need. They need legitimate top contenders who hate each other with a deep burning passion. Admittedly, a type of rivalry as such, is more than rare. There is no formula to breed such disdain between two people, but there is something the UFC could have done. Promote.
It is bewildering to see all of the promotional material, which these two camps have provided, go under the public's radar. We are talking about an event hosted at the historic MSG, yet, the only bit of promotion the UFC wants to release, is that of George St. Pierre. While it is an utter contradiction to be a fan of the sport of MMA and disrespect GSP, I wholeheartedly do not believe he deserves to headline the UFC 217 card. I do understand, the UFC put Dillashaw and Garbrandt as the co-main because they expect 217 to do well as a PPV (speculation). It makes a lot of sense, if the numbers are good, as the UFC believes, then the two young stars of the Bantamweight division should receive a good portion of exposure to the casual fan. But therein lies the mistake. The casual fan might not buy this card, according to my experience, casual fans of the sport are only aware of GSP through the UFC's odd style of promotion. The people I know to be casual fans, only knew of him through a search on google after seeing the former 170 lb. king playing in water. On top of my minimal experience, studies released in the past week have claimed the typical PPV buyer does not know who GSP is. Even if this card does well in terms of PPV buys, a lot fans will not understand the feud between Dillashaw and Garbrandt. They won't know about the back and forth, the training videos, the deceit, and the manipulation. Everything that makes the build up to the co-main event exciting. Then when we think about the fight itself, it may send us into a tailspin of emotion just attempting to patiently wait for Saturday night to come. Comments are closed.
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