Top UFC bantamweight Urijah Faber has been making accusations of PED use so thinly veiled that he could be wearing a pieces of Saran Wrap.
Faber fights division champion Dominick Cruz at UFC 199 on June 4, 2016 at The Forum in Inglewood, California in a trilogy fight. Faber won the first one, successfully defending his WEF title, back in 2007. Cruz won the rematch in 2011. Faber saw a different body in the second fight, and implied that was a factor in the loss.
“I’ve seen a drastic change in his body from the very first time that I fought him, to a year later when he fought, when he took the whole year off and came back all ripped,” said Faber to Submission Radio. “Then he looked pretty good two years ago when he made his long-awaited return, physically. And then all of a sudden he’s got floppy boobs and back fat. I mean, there’s no secret what’s going on there. … There’s something fishy going on there, and he knows and I know, that there’s a big advantage coming to me because of that. And I’ll just leave that at that and let USADA do their job.
Faber’s Team Alpha Male also suffered an acrimonious split when its highest ranked fighter, then bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw, moved to Team Elevation in Colorado. Faber implied strongly that Dillashaw too had been taking PEDs.
“I fought T.J. Dillashaw for 8 years, every day,” said Faber. “Dude I’ll smoke T.J. Dillashaw. He looks like a prepubescent little teenager right now because USADA came in.”
Faber followed up when pressed by saying “it’s very obvious.”
Cruz was not impressed, as he made clear during a recent appearance on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour.
“You can say whatever you need to say about me,” said Cruz, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “I understand, all is fair in love and war. Like, I get that he is going to come and attack me. I get that he wants to attack my character. He’s been doing this to me since 2007. This is the Faber game. He wants to turn everybody against you and make himself the good guy. He can’t handle being the not liked guy.
“But, at the same time, this is all based off of fear. Judgment is the main act of fear. If I’m on [PEDs], what, is everybody on it? Everybody he’s lost to? This is his excuse. He’s setting up excuses for the loss that I’m about to serve him.”
“Faber is showing his true colors. He has no professionalism. No loyalty. Before he said anything about me, he attacked Dillashaw on The Herd show and tried to deny it and say he didn’t. But, it’s like he’s trying to destroy Dillashaw’s career, and this is somebody who is supposed to be his family, his best friend. They were brothers at one point. I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of Dillashaw. He’s got his own things. That’s needless to say, you can see in our last fight build-up that he’s not my favorite person either. But he does mentor kids in wrestling and he does do stuff, and his own best friend is accusing him of using PEDs. It’s like, what are you doing?
“That’s a scumbag move. That’s your ex-friend, all because he left your camp? I mean, that shows the true colors of Faber. When you’re attacking me, I can understand that because he wants to ruin my faith because we’re fighting. But when you’re attacking a friend because he left your camp, you’re just a scumbag. It’s a lack of character, and that’s something I haven’t liked about Faber since day one. We’re finally seeing the true colors of Faber come out when he makes accusations with absolutely no proof of anything and one of the best doping agencies on planet Earth.”
“He can say whatever he wants about my body and all that stuff that he was saying, how it changed. Man, I was out for four-plus years. That’s like 1,500 days. Maybe a quarter of those, maybe like 700 of days I could work out. I was sitting behind the desk studying fights, analyzing fights, breaking things down. There was a point where I hit 175 pounds. I was depressed at times. There was a lot going in my life, that, I had let go of fighting. When I got that Dillashaw call to fight, I wasn’t going to tell the UFC no. I just said screw it, let’s go.
“I was rehabbing still when they asked me for that fight at nine months of my third ACL reconstruction. I got ready off the couch, off the analyst desk, went out there and fought and did my job, while he’s making excuses about PEDs. So it’s like, I’m doing my job and that’s all I can do. On June 4th, I’m going to do my job and shut that idiot up.”
