TJ Dillashaw explains why Cody Garbrandt is the toughest matchup for Merab Dvalishvili

By Cole Shelton - January 27, 2025

TJ Dillashaw believes Cody Garbrandt is the toughest matchup at bantamweight for champion Merab Dvalishvili.

TJ Dillashaw

Garbrandt is a former UFC bantamweight champion but is unranked. However, his former rival Dillashaw thinks the former champ would pose a lot of problems for Dvalishvili due to his skill set.

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“I would like to see Garbrandt fight him, eventually once Garbarnady gets a couple of wins under his belt. Garbrandt can wrestle, when I trained with Garbrandt a lot, he’s so fucking fast, he’s like a cat on his feet, he’s so hard to take down. And, as soon as he gets his confidence back, he hits like a truck, he’s faster (than Merab). I think he could do really good, if he can get a run going, believing in himself, he could be a threat,” Dillashaw said.

It is a bit of a surprise that TJ Dillashaw thinks Cody Garbrandt would be Merab Dvalishvili’s toughest test given they used to be rivals. However, Dillashaw has fought Garbrandt twice and trained with him in the past. So he knows how good he is, and believes he has all the tools to make it a difficult fight for Dvalishvili.

Yet, Garbrandt is unranked and is coming off a submission loss to Deiveson Figueiredo so he still is a long way from a title shot.

TJ Dillashaw claims UFC tried to make Cody Garbrandt the next Conor McGregor

TJ Dillashaw says the UFC tried to make Cody Garbrandt their next superstar.

Dillashaw and Garbrandt fought back at UFC 217 and UFC 227 with Dillashaw winning both fights by knockout. Going into the first fight, Garbrandt was coming off a win over Dominick Cruz, and Dillashaw says the promotion backed him to be a star.

“Coming off that, UFC was like ‘Hey, this is our next big horse, let’s put some money into him.’ So they market the s—t out of him. Put him in a bunch of commercials, got some celebrities behind him,” Dillashaw said. “From what I was told, they put like $6 million into marketing him before our fight. Gave us The Ultimate Fighter. So he went to massive stardom — way bigger than me — fast. They wanted him to be the next Conor McGregor, like run your mouth. I wouldn’t say he was the sharpest tool in the shed to be able to do something like that. So he just like said s—t, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

As for TJ Dillashaw, he’s 17-5 as a pro. His last fight was a TKO loss to Aljamain Sterling by TKO as he has said his career is over due to shoulder injuries.

This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM


Topics:

Cody Garbrandt TJ Dillashaw UFC