As great as Cody Garbrandt is at martial arts, showboating and straight up murking fools, the UFC bantamweight champion is pretty awful at the trash-talk game.
The build-up to his sensational belt-winning performance at UFC 207 proved that providing sound bites isn’t really his forte.
“Tell Dominick he needs to keep his fling on a fucking leash,” was a particular low-point for the undefeated UFC star. Not only did he tip Cruz off, but he got one of the key words of the quote wrong to ruin the rhyming scheme.
Who cares about Garbrandt’s ability to talk into a mic when what he’s doing inside the Octagon is so spectacular? His job is to entertain with his fists, and boy does he deliver on that front. In this regard, his smack talk acumen shouldn’t be that important… except for the next little while, it kind of is.
Now that Garbrandt is signed up to coach opposite TJ Dillashaw in the next season of the Ultimate Fighter, we’re guaranteed to hear a lot of verbal sparring between the two. Early signs suggest this could get very boring as ‘No Love’ has fully taken the “Snake in the Grass” moniker that Conor McGregor called Dillashaw on board, meaning we may hear a lot of it on the show.
This will haunt him forever https://t.co/feeKtwonmU
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 16, 2017
At first Dillashaw absolutely despised being compared to a spineless reptile, even going as far to call “The Notorious” a “traitor to Ireland” as a comeback to the insult.
However, not only is he warming to the nickname that was inspired by his infamous split from Team Alpha Male, but he’s actually embracing it. Dillashaw has begun using the snake moniker as a marketing ploy to promote TUF 25 on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPiNTOWh2Uo/?taken-by=tjdillashaw
Missed a golden opportunity to use the term “Snake Pit” instead of den there, but he’s definitely making the right move by no longer seeing the phrase as an insult. He would have grown massively frustrated if he allowed it to keep annoying him, judging by what Garbrandt has shown us so far.
To cap it all off, his team’s logo for the show is, that’s right, you guessed it…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPjFp8AhJZE/
It’s not the way Tadhg Furlong would have handled the situation, but it’s probably a smart move from the former champ.
