I’ll say one thing about former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bantamweight champion, Cody Garbrandt, he certainly has the right attitude coming off a pair of championship losses to TJ Dillashaw.
“No Love” has no hate for himself after getting starched by his former teammate at UFC 217, then again at UFC 227. Not because he’s okay with losing, but rather because he knows the alternative could be much, much worse.
Like “minimum wage” worse.
“I’m not okay with it, I hate losing, but it honestly re-lit a fire under me,” Garbrandt said (via MMA Fighting). “I remember the first time I lost, before I lost to T.J., the first time was five years ago. I got knocked out in one of my last amateur fights. I was like, holy shit, how am I going to be a professional fighter if I just got knocked out as an amateur? That was hard. I had to do a lot of soul-searching. I went to go speak with my mom, and she was like, ‘what are you going to do, go to the coal mines and work?’ I was like, ‘no, I’m going to go live out my dream.’”
The dream has been realized. Garbrandt (11-2) remains ranked No. 2 in the bantamweight division and prior to his Dillashaw fights, “No Love” won 11 straight with nine knockouts. Not too shabby for a 27 year-old fighter in his prime.
“Honestly, in this sport everyone is so good, everyone is so talented,” Garbrandt said. “You fight with four-ounce gloves on — in a perfect world, you’d be undefeated and walk away. That’s a small percentage. That’s Floyd Mayweather. Some people look at a loss and it’s devastating, it’s the end of the world, they go in a downward spiral and they let dirt get piled on them. You just got to brush yourself off. You can’t let the dirt bury you.”
Garbrandt will break out the shovel for his return fight at the UFC 235 pay-per-view (PPV) event, where he battles 135-pound stalwart, Marlon Vera, this Sat. night (March 2, 2019) inside T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And the last time “No Love” competed in “Sin City,” this happened.