TAM welter: Dillashaw worst teammate of all time

One of 2015 biggest fights didn’t take place inside a cage.

Top trainer Duane Ludwig and Team Alpha Male founder Urijah Faber were involved in a long, bitter disagreement following Bang’s tenure as head striking coach at Team Alpha Male. Ludwig left to form his own team in Colorado, and then TAM’s sole UFC champion, TJ Dillashaw, left to join Colorado’s Team Elevation, and to train with Bang in the Rockies.

Faber characterized Ludwig as a peanutbutter seller with racist and sexist leanings. Ludwig suggested perhaps Faber is punchy. Faber accused Dillashaw of walking away from family, and said he was no longer welcome in the gym. Then Ludwig appeared on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and blamed Conor McGregor.

It hasn’t ended.

TAM welterweight Adam Corrigan described Dillashaw as turning TAM into a cottage industry for concussions.

“T.J. was probably one of the worst training partners of all time, no matter who you were,” said Corrigan to Nick Baldwin for BE. “We have a lot of kids that are 18, 20 years old — they love MMA and just want to train with a teammate. They pay for it, and it’s the experience. You also get some serious fighters that come and train.

“He would spar with the kids that were there just to have fun and learn and be part of an experience. And he would beat the living s*** out of them — like, till they’re crying on the mat.

“And I’m like, ‘What the f*** are you doing man, just chill out. These aren’t the people to be beating up on right now.’ That’s just the person he was.”

“T.J. wanted to train with Duane. They have a really good relationship. Very tight, very good, they understand each other. The same kind of psychotic brain, ‘Who cares about the world? Let’s focus on each other,’ type of thing.

“Having him gone, I didn’t really care. I got along with him as a mate but it didn’t really bother me or hurt me at all. He left and I was like, ‘Cool.’ It’s better for the younger guys at the gym because they’re not getting concussed every weekend.”

“If he had done it the right way, T.J. would probably still be in the good books with us. But he lied about it for a long time. He said, ‘No, I’m not doing this, no, I’m not doing this.’ It was pretty tough because the team was like, ‘Hold on a second, you’re kind of just stabbing us in the back.’ He just lied about it.

“And that’s the thing. He should’ve just said, ‘Hey, this is what I’ve been offered, they offered me to do this, and offered me to do that.'”

“I think MusclePharm offered him $60,000 a year to train. In the long-term of things, that’s not a lot of money. You’re sacrificing all the training partners you’ve got — all the top guys in the world — to train with a bunch of guys you don’t know. And you don’t know if they’re going to push you or not.”