Max Holloway, a featherweight champion got injured his leg while training and pulled out of his scheduled title defense against former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar. The card is scheduled for March 3 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The UFC reached out to T.J. Dillashaw, a bantamweight champion to see if he was interested in defending his title against the Cody Garbrandt, whom Dillashaw defeated and earned the belt with a second-round knockout victory, but bantamweight champion turned down the fight.
But instead, Dillashaw was pursuing a super fight with flyweight champion and pound-for-pound king, Demetrious Johnson. Now it seems this fight is in works and someone is not happy with that, is among former bantamweight champion, Dominick Cruz.
Cruz was speaking to recently on MaxOut with Ed Mylett, implying that he should be next for the belt and that Dillashaw is only looking for an “easy fight” instead of risking losing his title. (via MMAFighting)
“I think [the championship] should be my next fight, but they play weird games where they want to give T.J. Dillashaw an easier fight because he doesn’t want to fight somebody hard right after he won the title” said Cruz. “He wants an easy fight. So he wants to fight somebody that he knows he can keep the belt a little longer before he knows he gets a really hard fight, whereas I went T.J. Dillashaw, Urijah Faber, Cody Garbrandt and then I lose the belt.
“Let’s go T.J.! I beat you. Don’t you want to get that back? Stop going down and looking for little baby boys at 125. Silly Dilly, that’s what I call him.”
Cruz was the first bantamweight champion but vacated the title after a series of injuries kept him on the shelf for three years hoping to get an immediate rematch for the title against either Garbrandt or TJ Dillashaw.
Lasy year, Dominick Cruz was out of his UFC 219 fight with Jimmie Rivera due to a broken arm. Cruz, the longtime 135-pound champion, regained the title from TJ Dillashaw back in January 2016 before losing it to Cody Garbrandt last December. Cruz has not fought since falling to Garbrandt at UFC 207.
“That’s the fight that matters,” Cruz said. “Everybody wants to see if he can beat me and everybody knows I can beat him. Why wouldn’t we see that again? I just don’t understand why it would go any other way. . .
“It’s silly to me, the game. If I lost to somebody and I was the champion, I’d want that fight right away. Yes, [I did that with Faber]. I had to get it back and I want to get my loss back from Cody too but he lost so I want the guy that’s the champion.”
Dominick Cruz is hoping that TJ Dillashaw will stop “running” and realize the best option is for the two of them to have a rematch.
“I’m sad for him” Cruz explained. “He’s not challenging himself. He doesn’t get, doesn’t see the big picture. There’s only a few people that generate interest in this division and I’m one of them. There’s no Ifs, Ands, or Buts about it, so where are you going? That’s the fight people want to see. There’s only certain fight that create interest in this thing and he’s running all over the place, anywhere but where the interest is and it blows my mind. It blows my mind because how do you sell pay-per-views, how do you get people to tune in if you’re dodging the people that generate the most of that just because you want safety.”
It seems unlikely that Dominick Cruz will get a rematch with Dillashaw, after scoring a title from Cody, TJ Dillashaw is eying a super fight with Demetrious Johnson. But Cruz thinks if they ever will meet again and when they do, “The Dominator” has a plan.
“I get the belt back by beating T.J. and then I give Cody a shot again because that’s what it is. That’s the way it should be because I lost to Cody so let’s see if I made the adjustments.”
