Given the animosity between Urijah Faber & the rest of Team Alpha Male, and former teammate TJ Dillashaw, fight fans have been anxious to see how the beef between coaches Cody Garbrandt and TJ Dillashaw plays out on the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Interestingly enough, during a recent interview, TJ Dillashaw explained that while Garbrandt was just getting his feet wet at Team Alpha Male, Dillashaw was on his way out the door. Because of this, Dillashaw feels there is no reason for the two men to have such an intense rivalry. Dillashaw pointed to Team Alpha Male don Urijah Faber as the mastermind behind the ongoing beef, accusing his former mentor of perpetuating a rivalry.
Faber spoke on a recent episode of Submission Radio to respond to Dillashaw’s allegations, saying:
“Who cares what TJ thinks? I mean, what is he basing his reality on? I’m just doing my own thing. It has nothing to do with me how these guys feel about each other. I mean, this is the real world, you know, I’m just doing my thing (laughs). That’s it. It’s just funny – obviously what’s happened is the guy is sitting around, thinking about stuff. I’m like, dude, you want to go to a different team? Go ahead and go to a different team, whatever purpose. Like, don’t turn yourself into a victim. It has nothing to do with me. I don’t like him turning me into the bad guy. That’s kind of weird. But other than that, you know, we’re fine.”
Given the fallout between the two men, Faber was asked if it was strange assisting Garbrandt in coaching opposite Dillashaw on The Ultimate Fighter after Dillashaw helped Faber coach on TUF several seasons ago:
“No, not really anymore. You know, it’s such a weird situation and something that I never really foresaw or like really enjoyed partaking in in the least bit. It is funny though to see how ideologies of what really happened changed, and at this point it seems like TJ thinks that he was kicked off of our team by me, which is bizarre that he thinks that and so it’s kind of a weird thing, man. He’s kind of turned himself into a victim, like he never wanted to go and he had to leave the gym crying cause we kicked him off the team, and I’m like, when did this become reality? So at this point it’s just kind of like, I just try to stay away from the drama of the whole thing and just let my focus be my focus and everything else go.”
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/28/2017.