Urijah Faber hasn’t really spoken out about T.J. Dillashaw’s failed drug tests, which prompted “Viper” to vacate his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Bantamweight title and subsequently forced United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA) to suspend him for two years.
Now, the leader of Team Alpha Male (TAM) – Dillashaw’s former training grounds – gives his take on T.J.’s situation. And much like how Dominick Cruz feels, Faber says Dillashaw will return to the cage a better version of himself. Urijah, however, doesn’t mean it as a compliment, saying his old protégé will simply figure out a way to cheat the system again.
“He’s going to be a beast,” Faber said during an interview with MMA Tonight (via MMA Fighting). “He’ll put the scientist’s cap back on and figure out how he can have an advantage. That’s the way he plays. It’s one thing if people just cheat. It’s another thing if they cheat and they’re really intelligent about it and they work really hard and they have natural gifts and that’s the scenario here. If you’re going to be a cheat, you may as well be a cheat like that,” he added.
“Now, do I think he’ll be clean? Will there be after effects from whatever he’s been doing all these years? Probably, he’ll have made some gains on that. There’s no doubt that he’ll be a tough guy and people will forget about it like all the other guys who’ve been caught cheating.”
What makes it more personal for Faber – other than their past bitter history – is the fact that Dillashaw used his underhandedness to score two knockout wins over Cody Garbrandt, a TAM loyalist.
“When you have somebody that cheats in a sport like this, not only is it dangerous, especially when they have a temper in practice, it’s unfair,” Faber said. “They’re also lying because they know they are doing something deliberately underhanded. They’re also stealing from people that don’t do it, like myself, [or] a guy like Cody Garbrandt. That’s millions of dollars, massive opportunities, that’s physical health,” he said.
“T.J.’s a master of turning himself into the victim. Like when he kind of got bought off to go and fight for Team Elevation originally – which is cool, go ahead and do that. Then when Conor called him out and called him a snake . . . somehow he turned that around to where he was a victim. . . He became the victim there and now he’s ‘facing the adversity of getting caught doing EPO’ which is like the height of PED use.
Despite T.J.’s apology, Faber says he could’ve owned up to it a bit more.
“There’s no remorse or anything, so that’s kind of hard to see, to be honest. I wish he would just come out and say, ‘Look, this is what I had. I stole, I cheated, I lied.’”
Dillashaw will be able to return to action in 2021, and will return to a vastly different division than when he left it. Aside from having a new champion, it will likely be a bit more stacked if the latest official UFC rankings are any indication of what the future holds for the Flyweight division.