T.J. Dillashaw defends taking final title fight with injury: ‘Aljamain Sterling to me was the weakest champion’

T.J. Dillashaw’s last fight didn’t go as planned. But he has no regrets about betting on himself.

It’s been over three years since Dillashaw’s last fight, a lopsided title fight loss to Aljamain Sterling in which Dillashaw failed to make it past the second round before succumbing to strikes from the then-bantamweight champion. Dillashaw later revealed he entered the contest with a shoulder injury, drawing ire from fans and critics, who wondered why Dillashaw didn’t just pull out of the fight.

Speaking to former rival Dominick Cruz on the Love & War podcast, Dillashaw explained why he was comfortable competing with a serious injury and why he still thought he could win.

“So anyways, the point of the story was that I’d dealt with adversity and got wins,” Dillashaw said. “I dealt with my shoulder against Garbrandt and got wins, I dealt with my knee against Sandhagen and got wins.

“Aljamain Sterling to me was the weakest champion that had been and I don’t mean that disrespectful, just like he’s got some holes in his game that I felt like I could exploit.”

Even though Dillashaw was less than 100 percent heading into his UFC 280 co-main event clash with Sterling, he was confident Sterling didn’t present enough of a threat on the feet for him to be worried as long as Dillashaw could keep the fight standing.

However, in the lead-up to the Sterling fight, Dillashaw’s injury woes persisted.

“I’m hitting mitts with Tyler Wombles and I’m doing this bag drill where I’m slipping and hitting a left hook and I threw a little bit too wide and instantly just felt a tear,” Dillashaw said. “At that time, it wasn’t compromised and coming out of the socket, it was just like I couldn’t lift my arm to the best of my ability. It was like I couldn’t really strike with it that great but I was like, I’m fighting Aljamain Sterling. If I was fighting someone like Petr Yan, yeah, maybe I probably wouldn’t take the fight because his striking is good. Aljamain, I was going to hold on my feet. My grappling wasn’t affected. I was doing great in grappling.

“Four weeks before the fight, I sublux my shoulder. … I’ve dealt with this before. It’s not a problem, right? But then it just got worse and got worse and then I flew out to Abu Dhabi two weeks before the fight and I started losing weight and that’s when it got really bad. I would just be doing grappling matches with Juan Archuleta, like wrestling around, and it would dislocate. It’s way too late to pull out. I just trained for months for this fight and, to be honest, I don’t want to go back and get another shoulder surgery and just all this shit, so I’m like, I’m going to take the fight.”

On paper, Dillashaw was a difficult matchup for Sterling. The two-time bantamweight champion was known for his wrestling acumen, which could help to neutralize Sterling’s grappling, and he was considered the superior striker in the matchup. However, Dillashaw’s shoulder slipped out of place again during the fight and that erased any chance of Dillashaw pulling off a miracle win.

“I went to my doctor and I asked him, ‘Hey, teach me how to put this back into socket,’” Dillashaw said. “And so he did it and that’s why when it came out in the first round, I was able to defend him off my back, did alright, sat back in the corner, boom, put it back in before the doctors got in there and then I was like, ‘No, I’m good. Don’t worry about it.’ Just thinking I could get the knockout and be like that insane, awesome story.”