Team Alpha Male Urijah Faber has given his reaction to the news that long-standing member TJ Dillashaw’s will be departing after being offered a deal to train with Elevation Fight Team in Colorado.
Speaking on Team Alpha Male Radio, Faber gave a number of interesting insights into the situation and you can read our keynotes below, or scroll down to watch the full video for yourselves.
– Faber says he’d heard rumors of Dillashaw potentially leaving from a couple of different sources in the past week, but when approaching the bantamweight champion directly TJ said it wasn’t true. However, he eventually did tell him, revealing that he had been offered a good deal to make the switch.
– Faber thinks the financial aspect of it has been overplayed as he says Dillashaw could make the same money mowing lawns.
– Dillashaw told Faber he would still like to come back and train with Team Alpha Male during his off-seasons, but ‘The California Kid’ appears to have ruled that out. He doesn’t want Dillashaw coming back when it suits him as it’s disruptive, makes the team seem like it’s playing second fiddle to the champion’s new team, and also Dillashaw may now end up fighting some of the people on TAM which brings about a conflict of interests.
– Faber also claims that Dillashaw has some anger issues, can be single-minded and overly competitive, resulting in him having gone too far in sparring with other fighters at times. He says in the past they’ve tended to laugh it off, but he doesn’t want Dillashaw coming back and doing that now that he’s not part of the team.
– Despite everything that’s going on Faber stresses that he’s still happy to be friends with Dillashaw and for other people on the team to be too, but that training is a separate issue and won’t be happening anymore.
– He says he’ll still be rooting for Dillashaw when he fights Dominick Cruz as he likes TJ, but dislikes Cruz.
– Regarding Elevation Fight Team, Faber believes they’ve also tried to poach other fighters from Team Alpha Male, naming Cody Garbrandt specifically. He doesn’t rule out the possibility that Dillashaw could convince a few people to move with him, but believes it’s unlikely to happen.
Watch the full conversation below, starting at around 1hr 13mins.
