Midnight Mania: The $6 Million Man

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

It’s been a rough week for Cody Garbrandt. Just a few days removed from his co-main event slot versus Miles Johns at UFC Vegas 100, “No Love” was forced to withdraw with an undisclosed issue. It’s a tough way to end the year, as Garbrandt was aiming to return to the win column after a competitive loss to Deiveson Figueiredo back at UFC 300 (watch here).

There was a time when Garbrandt was on the absolute top of the world. Back in 2015, Garbrandt was an undefeated UFC champion at just 25 years of age. Based on the way he handled Dominick Cruz to capture gold, he looked destined to reign over the Bantamweights for a while. Instead, it was former champion TJ Dillashaw who stopped him in consecutive fights, ending Garbrandt’s time at the top.

On a recent episode of The Casuals MMA, Dillashaw reflected on his rivalry with Garbrandt and also revealed that UFC invested a massive amount of promotion and money into turning “No Love” into the “next Conor McGregor.”

“He had a lot of pressure on him too,” Dillashaw said of Garbrandt. “He had an amazing fight against Cruz. I’ve never seen Cody Garbrandt be that good. His style is perfect for Cruz. He’s by far the fastest human being I’ve ever trained with when it comes to reaction times and how quick he is. He’s got great wrestling, and he’s got power in his hands, so it was a perfect match up for him.

“Coming off that, UFC was like ‘Hey, this is our next big horse, let’s put some money into him.’ So they market the s—t out of him, put him in a bunch of commercials, got some celebrities behind him. From what I was told, they put like $6 million into marketing him before our fight, gave us The Ultimate Fighter. So he went to massive stardom — way bigger than me — fast. They wanted him to be the next Conor McGregor, like run your mouth. I wouldn’t say he was the sharpest tool in the shed to be able to do something like that, so he just like said s—t, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Whenever Garbrandt does return, he’ll on the final fight of his current UFC contract. Garbrandt is still just 33 years of age, so it’ll be very interesting to see whether or not UFC continues invest in “No Love.”

November 8, 2024