Faber: TJ making himself out to be the victim?!?

Former WEC featherweight champion and the #4 ranked UFC bantamweight Urijah Faber spoke recently with Submission Radio, for a wide-ranging interview.

UFC bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw is a former member of Faber’s Team Alpa Male, and recently had a well publicized move to another team. Faber said the two are no longer best friends, and he would take a fight with Dillashaw if offered.

Oh yeah, of course,” he said. “I mean what am I gonna tell Zuffa? (laughs) ‘Hey you know, this guy used to be on my team so errr, I’m not going to fight for the world championship? No, it’s not gonna happen. No, of course.

However, Faber said he is not relieved he can now fight his former teammate.

No, it’s not relief,” he said. “He and I aren’t the best of friends like we were before, as you can imagine. I feel like he’s kind of turned himself into a victim in this whole situation, where like in his mind I’m the bad guy because he’s left our team and I told him ‘alright, well if you’re not on our team you can’t be coming in here and training with us’, you know.

“So he feels that I kicked him out of the gym – he said it in an interview or something like that – which is kind of comical in the fact that he actually moved to different state and claims a different team and told me that he was no longer going to be with our team. But, so I think he’s a little shooken about it.

“And you know what man, this is a sport where we are competitors. I’ve actually fought friends of mine, like Scotty Jorgensen and Brian Bowles and Charlie Valencia. These are all guys that are friends of mine. And you know, the whole thing with TJ was just of kind of…it’s not something I’m happy about, but this is the truth.

Faber fights Frankie Saenz at UFC 194 on December 12. Faber is coming off a decision loss to Frankie Edgar in May, but before that he fought Francisco Rivera and Alex Caceres. Both are terrific fighters, but neither is high profile. Now he fights another fighter with a low if growing profile in Saenz.

That’s a big understatement that he’s not very well known,” said Faber. “Like, no one knows who Frankie is. He’s on what, a seven fight win streak? But I think his one loss before that was a disqualification for him throwing an illegal knee. The guy is very, very tough, and, you know, no one knew who TJ Dillashaw was either.

“So I’m taking this guy very serious and approaching him as a top level competitor because he is. And I’m not necessarily pumped about how much notoriety he has, but that’s his problem, you know. I’ve got plenty of it for myself and I plan on putting on a great fight and fighting tooth and nail. And I’m excited for the fights to come after this one as well, but I gotta win this one first.

I just wanna finish. Whether there’s a submission or KO or TKO, I just wanna finish. And I’m not sure exactly how I’m gonna get it, but I’ll be doing everything in my power from the get-go to make it happen.

(After a win over Saenz) obviously I’m back in the hunt for a belt. There’s a friend and a foe that are about to do battle, TJ Dillashaw and Dominick Cruz – TJ being the friend and Dominick being the foe. On top of that, I could see myself going back up [to featherweight]. I gained weight to go up and fight Frankie, and then the weight never came down, which I wasn’t used to. I was walking around at like 164 lbs, a little thicker than I normally would be, and so this has been a tough cut. And I’m gonna see, without IVs and things like that, how the 135-pound weight class is gonna do for me.

“But I could go back up to 145 and there’s super fights there too; guys like Conor McGregor. And those are three fights in itself, Cruz, TJ and Conor that I think a lot of eyes would be on and would also be fights that I could make some real money on.