Love & War<\/a> podcast, Dillashaw was asked about the incident, and he shared his opinion of Holdsworth\u2019s demeanor before answering.<\/p>\n\u201cHoldsworth was a guy that came into the gym and he\u2019s insanely good,\u201d Dillashaw said. \u201cLike, very, very good, his grappling was the best. Like he\u2019s the best I\u2019ve ever worked with. Unfortunately, he didn\u2019t have that competitive mindset. Like, when he first came in the gym, he could have went pro right away and he would find reasons not to fight and not want to do it. He didn\u2019t have that killer instinct in him. And so he was always looking for a way out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holdsworth looked to be a future bantamweight contender after dominating his season of The Ultimate Fighter in 2013 and then improving to 6-0 as a pro with a win over Chico Camus at UFC 173. However, following his training mishap with Dillashaw, he never fought again.<\/p>\n
One thing Dillashaw wants to make crystal clear is that any version of the story that has him intentionally harming Holdsworth in such a way that it would be detrimental to Holdsworth\u2019s career is purely false.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember we were both getting ready for my Renan Barao fight, he was also fighting on that card against Chico [Camus], and I hit him with an overhand right in boxing and ever since then, he had been dealing with concussion stuff,\u201d Dillashaw said. \u201cHe cuts a lot of weight, so he had to cut early throughout camp, I think that affected him a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stories are being said, we were in sparring in MMA, he shoots his shot, I stuff it and he\u2019s coming to stand up and I go to throw a knee. I\u2019m thinking I\u2019m going to hit him in the chest, he\u2019s standing up, he goes back down and I knee him in the head. It was an illegal blow and I felt horrible about it. It wasn\u2019t like I maliciously went out and kneed him, people are saying in the back of the head. How am I kneeing him in the back of the head? There\u2019s these things that were getting blown out of proportion because I left the team and they want to make me look as bad as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dillashaw officially parted ways with Team Alpha Male in 2015, though he had already been training apart from the group with coach and close friend Duane Ludwig. It was a compensation dispute between Ludwig and Team Alpha Male that was the impetus for he and Dillashaw leaving the group for good, and had nothing to do with Holdsworth\u2019s injury, according to Dillashaw.<\/p>\n
Cruz also supported Dillashaw\u2019s overall training attitude, suggesting that fighters accept a certain level of risk when they prepare for a fight at the highest level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a very competitive guy,\u201d Dillashaw said. \u201cWith everything I do, I always want to win. I want to win every round, ever since wrestling. I didn\u2019t want to get taken down in practice. I get pissed if I get taken down in practice. Sometimes that gets the best of me and I want to go harder, and I want to go harder, and then he goes harder, and then you\u2019re in a room full killers and everyone just keeps going harder and harder and harder, and then when you get the better of someone you\u2019re the bad guy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019re training for world title fights. We\u2019re not wrestling. We\u2019re not playing chess. We\u2019re playing a contact sport that bad things can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T.J. Dillashaw wants to set the facts straight on the Chris Holdsworth incident. For years, Dillashaw has taken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-308622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}