T.J. Dillashaw campaigned hard for a flyweight superfight with Demetrious Johnson but, according to him, the UFC were just as keen to push him into an immediate rematch with Cody Garbrandt.
That rematch materialized at UFC 227, where Dillashaw knocked out Garbrandt for the second time in a row and cemented himself as a top-three pound-for-pound talent.
According to TJ, Ultimate Fighting Championship was ‘hard’ for Garbrandt and wanted to ‘pump him up’ as the new face of the bantamweight division.
“We agreed to [a fight with Demetrious Johnson] but then he had to get shoulder surgery and so the UFC was like, ‘We don’t know how long he’s gonna be out, we want you to fight Cody,’” Dillashaw said on the latest edition of Brendan Schaub’s Below the Belt, per MMA Fighting’s Jed Meshew.