We all got kind of caught up there for a few minutes, didn’t we?
UFC 207 was mostly on the radar for Ronda Rousey's return, and once she spent 48 seconds serving as Amanda Nunes' punching bag, it felt like there almost wasn’t room to talk about anything else.
Still, moments before Rousey’s compelling, if highly unspectacular, comeback, Cody Garbrandt put an exclamation point on a pretty good little run of his own.
After months of verbal jousting with Dominick Cruz—exchanges which Cruz’s minions and countless pals in the media were seemingly awarding to him on an almost nightly basis—Garbrandt ended his undefeated streak of almost 10 years in incredible fashion.
He shucked and jived around Cruz, countering and peppering him with crisp combinations that seemingly ended with a dance move or two on every exit.
He swatted and slapped at Cruz, the fistic equivalent of a parent disciplining a child right down to the occasional scolding pointed finger when his shots would land.
He knocked Cruz down almost at his leisure and then begged him to get up so he could do it again, the epitome of a measured, focused athlete who most people simply refused to believe was inside of the man who stormed off from an interview out of sheer frustration only days earlier.
He didn’t go win a title at UFC 207, he straight up took one.
In the post-fight press conference Garbrandt, perhaps more popular than ever after handing his title over to a sick child before it was warm on his own waist, lobbied for a rematch with Cruz given his lofty status in bantamweight history.
However, not long before he dispatched Cruz, former champion TJ Dillashaw put on one of the best performances of his career against John Lineker and finally started to run his mouth enough to get some attention once they put a microphone in front of him.
To those with short memories, it may be that this was just a case of a top contender wanting his belt back and finally making some noise in the name of getting it. To those who recall exactly how both Dillashaw and Garbrandt became world champions though, there’s a lot more at play.
The two are former teammates, both proteges of Urijah Faber at the legendary little guy factory of Team Alpha Male. Over the course of 2013 and 2014, then-striking coach Duane Ludwig developed Dillashaw into one of the division's top strikers by building a shifty, unorthodox style that built off Dillashaw’s athleticism and quickness as a long, smallish bantamweight.
The results were astonishing.
Dillashaw took off, blitzing everyone in front of him until he earned a title shot at UFC 173. Not entirely unlike Garbrandt—who was an undefeated regional fighter at the time—at UFC 207, Dillashaw put one of the all-time great challenger-on-champion beatings on Renan Barao, shocking the world to reach the top of the mountain.
Not long after, however, Ludwig left Alpha Male due to disagreements with Faber, and Dillashaw followed him. It was a move that didn’t sit well with most of Alpha Male, as Faber was quite publicly distraught and others voiced displeasure. Now a UFC prospect and one not keen on perceived violations of loyalty, Garbrandt was one of the most vocal. When Dillashaw finally lost the title (to Cruz, incidentally), Garbrandt said to Submission Radio (Warning: Link contains NSFW language) of him:
"If our team ain't good enough for you motherf----r then get the f--k out…[t]hat's some bulls--t. You left your family and your friends here to go to Denver and look what that got you. You got your ass beat."
All of this is to say, as we enjoyed the excitement of Rousey’s return and the fun Cruz and Garbrandt were providing heading into UFC 207, we kind of forgot what was lurking in the bantamweight class with a few lucky breaks.
Dillashaw’s win and Garbrandt’s stunning success were those very breaks, providing an incoming payoff to one of the best feuds in the business. It’s a chance for Alpha Male to finally get a crack at Dillashaw for leaving, and its golden boy will have a chance to do it.
Dana White says Dillashaw will have his day, and he’d be mad to pass up the chance to cash in on booking his hottest new champion with a man he genuinely despises. Much of the hate with Cruz was manufactured over the course of a few months and almost out of nowhere, whereas the Dillashaw stuff has been festering for years and is very, very real.
Look how well that turned out.
It will only be better with Dillashaw, and the excitement can begin once the UFC formally books it.
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