Cody Garbrandt lands a huge body shot against Dominick Cruz at UFC 207 last Dec. 30, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images/Christian Petersen)
Cody Garbrandt silenced all of his haters when he dominated now former UFC bantamweight champion Dominic Cruz across all five rounds of their championship contest. One of Garbrandt's trainers recently spoke with Brian Stann and claimed that his team had little to no concern coming into the fight against Cruz.
Justin Buchholz, who is the head coach of Garbrandt's team, talked to Stann on on Toe-2-Toe and told him about Garbrandt's Mike Tyson mentality. Buchholz has described Garbrandt's experiences growing up, including getting stabbed and having to fight older men as a teen, as experiences that shaped him to be the resilient fighter he is today. Buchholz also said that it would be hard to get into Garbrandt's head, although others will beg to differ especially after his walking out of an interview prior to UFC 207.
"Going into that fight we had all kinds of altercations in camp between some of Dominick's team and our team and there were little street fighting situations between us and when I saw the big shift, where I really was confident in Cody's mentality, that Cody was in his head was when Dominick said 'that's the kind of energy Cody's putting off, I need to match that energy,'" Buchholz told Stann in the interview. "I was like, hey homeboy you're not going to match that energy," he added.
Garbrandt used this mentality to full effect in his dethroning of Cruz. He looked highly relaxed and comfortable during their matchup and even showboated when he knew he was ahead on the judge's scorecards. Garbrandt verbally taunted Cruz during the fight and was even confident enough to break dance and perform push-ups during no less than a title fight in the UFC.
After passing the challenge of winning a UFC belt with flying colors, Garbrandt's team is now focused on training him once more to try and defend it. Garbrandt's next opponent is likely to be former UFC bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw.
Dillashaw made a controversial switch of camps to the Elevation Fight team from Team Alpha Male, which caused him to be banned from the latter, MMA Fighting reported. This choice maybe paying off though, as he now has a two fight win streak since losing the title to Cruz via split decision back in Jan. 17, 2016.
Watch some of Cody Garbrandt's highlights in MMA here:
