Dillashaw successfully reclaimed the bantamweight champion title by knocking out Cody Garbrandt in the second round of their grudge match earlier this month at UFC 217 that stemmed from Dillashaw’s split from Team Alpha Male (TAM) back in 2015.
UFC veteran Urijah Faber revealed the idea of coming out of retirement to fight his former teammate. Meanwhile, Dillashaw sees this match-up as his “easiest payday ever.”
Dillashaw’s striking coach Duane Ludwig unsurprisingly agrees with his assessment, recently speaking to MMA Hour:(MMA fighting)
“Not to be disrespectful, I’m not trying to be an a—hole in any way, but that would be a pretty easy fight for T.J,” Ludwig said “Anything can happen in a fight, but because I used to coach both of them, I used to watch them spar many, many rounds, so I have memories of which direction the sparring rounds could go.”
“It’s not solely me, but I helped (Dillashaw) a little bit,” Ludwig said. “But he does improve and Faber doesn’t improve. He had a very hard time picking up my system. He’s just set in his ways and that’s good because it’s been successful, but the sport has evolved and he hasn’t so it would be in my eyes a pretty easy fight for T.J. and I would like to see it just because they’d both make some money off it, it would be good for the sport, in every direction it would be good.
“I’m not looking forward to dealing with drama again, they seem to love drama, I do like to stay away from that, if it does happen, just let it be a regular fight where we train and we do our interviews, and we go and fight.”
Team Alpha Male leader Urijah Faber claims Ludwig and Dillashaw left the team to go into business for themselves, while they have maintained that they were essentially kicked out.
Ludwig was once a part of Team Alpha Male (TAM) but had a falling out with the team when Dillashaw decided to train with him in Colorado. It caused a lot of tension between the two of them and their former training partners. Ludwig believes that so much of the problems between himself and Dillashaw and their former partners came from having “different perspectives on the same situation.”
Regardless of all, and the dust had cleared after UFC 217, Ludwig insists he still cares for his former training partners.
“I’ll always make time for T.J. and he knows that,” Ludwig said. “I’ll always make time for a lot of people, even after the fight with Cody, I had a heart-to-heart with Danny Castillo, it was really emotional for me, I generally love and care for those guys, we’re a family and a team and to have this drama, f**king I was crying and s**t, I was like, ‘Man, I love you guys, if you need anything please let me know, I’m sorry there has to be drama.’ It just goes back to my personality, if I’m in, I’m all in… I just want to say I still love those guys, I’m sorry that there’s drama and hopefully we can move on.”
Listen to Duane Ludwig in the player below:
