Cody Garbrandt Looks Back on TJ Dillashaw Fights

If you look at a lot of my losses, I would load up and put my head first. And then, why am I going to give you my eye? When you get back to the TJ fight, the two fights, those, you were more emotionally invested in those fights than any fight you've ever had, right? Definitely. And that's not me. I don't have to, Joe, I love the fight. I can fight in your studio right now. You know what I mean? I'll kick Jamie's ass. You know, I'll make fun of his pants earlier, you know? Oh, wait. See what's in your jeans. Same thing. Same thing. Same thing. So, for me to go in there and kind of have that, you know, just an example of, I don't need to do that. Yeah, you know? And, you know, it was great. I was a world champion. I felt like I had to defend it. A lot of other stuff, you know, the backstory of it and the injury coming off a year. I was just so, like I said, not mentally ready to go in there and fight that. I physically was like overcompensated for it. The emotions that go into a fight with someone you don't like, it's always extremely difficult. But for you to go into a fight with someone you don't like, who you used to be tight with and used to train with, that's got to be like doubly difficult. It's not like I said I didn't like TJ. I didn't agree with a lot of things that happened. That's so far in the past. I'm, you know, past that. But yeah, definitely taking that in there, it was my mental state was not what it should have been to go in against a guy like TJ, you know, and we can fast forward to where he got popped and this and that. TJ can be on that stuff. He can be on that stuff and he still can't beat me. When I'm focused and I'm mentally there, I'm in there and I'm excited, you know, like I'm glad that he's coming back. He's got to prove to himself, you know, and that's a big fight for me to come back to, you know, in the future. That's going to happen. You know, I feel like TJ caught me at a time where mentally I was not in the best state of mind to go on there and be a champion. And that's why I was taken from me. You know, I wasn't doing the right things, you know, the slight edge things. I wasn't doing those. And you know, he capitalized and I look back on it. I kept going back in those fights and a little bit of insanity. You know, you got to be insane to repeat the same thing, thinking a different outcome. And that's what I was doing in there. I was always trained hard, always prepared ready. But what was, what was, it wasn't nothing do that I needed to do. It was just the slight, slight edge things. So work this, work that. And looking back on it, it's hindsight is 20-20, always in the fight. But I'm thankful for that. I have to feel like if I would have went off and defended the title and I probably wouldn't have been as hungry and motivated as I am today. And that's going to help me out for the next five years of my career, however long I want to fight for. You know, I always kind of break my life down to five, five-year increments. But I'm excited for it. I'm more hungry than ever because I know what it takes to get back to the top. So when you said that you stopped visualizing for a long time and now you're doing it again, are you doing it now in, do you have like a rigid format? Do you have like a, do you have a disciplined format of visualization or do you just spend time alone thinking about things? Like how do you do it? Yeah, I do, I do a format, write things out, write out goals, three months, six months, a year, five years. What I want to accomplish was financial rights, you know, athletic rights, personal growth, spiritual growth, family growth, things like that. So I try to prioritize what I'm lacking or what's the lower grade that I give myself and try to focus more on that. So it's all balanced. I feel like I'm trying to balance my life more as far as being, I grew up in chaos. You know, I feel like I can, I do well in that, but I'm at a different place in my life and what I want from my son and my future. I want to have that balance of you're not so a hundred percent in this and you know, lacking this, you know, I want to make sure it's kind of balanced across my goals. But I feel like, you know, going back to talking about getting out of your comfort zone, like doing things that absolutely suck and you got to mentally put yourself in that position to build that. Were you in your comfort zone when you were a champion? Like when you say getting out of your comfort zone, I know you trained hard. So like what is different? I think that I remove myself after winning the world title. I didn't feel like it was everything that I thought I was going to be. In what way? The whole prolific, you're a world champion. You're the best in the world. You know, I didn't, I never expected a lot of things that would happen. I just focused on it. What did you think it was going to be like? I don't know. I don't think I had any expectations when I feel like a lot of things change around. Oh man, like how's it feel? Like I'm still the same person. I just got to, you know, I'm just the number one person in the world. I do, you know, I don't know. It just didn't. Did you think that like in achieving such a great goal that you would feel satisfied, that you would feel like you made it? I wasn't satisfied. Maybe because that's what at the later than the tunnel, since I was 12 years old and I was man, just through the journey of getting to where I was at, looking back on it, I was like, man, like what's next? I didn't have the what's next. Isn't it interesting? Like this is the thing that gets brought up all the time about fighting is that so much of it is mental, especially at the elite level, like at your level. So much of it is how you are approaching all aspects of your life, how your relationship is going, how your friendships are going like what, how you what's your relationship with your family? You know, there's so much of how a fighter fight and then what is your focus on? Is your focus on adulation? Is your focus on doing interviews and letting everybody tell you you're the shit or is your focus on continual improvement and then recognize that, yeah, you might be a world champion, but there's a bunch of hungry lions climbing up that hill to try to get to the king. Yeah, you see it. I have, you know, Chris Oldsworth, my coach, my trainer, my good friend, he travels with me, you know, we put through hard workouts, you know, this morning we're going to go after your podcast. And that's a thing doing those balancing that, okay, I might have, you know, come on your show absolute honor. I got to train. I got to, you know, I can't take this week off for here, you know, look at homes and doing other things with PMP, my other business partners. So just prioritizing what's important, what your goals, how you're reaching those goals, what are you working towards? Are you reading help books, self help books? Are you reading, you know, books to help your mental fortitude to strengthen that? You know, are you doing yoga? Are you doing other so much resources? And staying enthusiastic. And staying enthusiastic. I think that's the main thing. I wasn't enthusiastic. I felt like I was just going through the motions and there's a lot of other things. There's a lot of things that can transpire, but I'm slowly putting a blame on myself because that's all I can control what I do, how I react to things. And I wasn't the person that I am during those kinds of, you know, tribulations or trials in my life. You know, and I've grown from that. I was 24, 25 years old. I'm 29 years old now. 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