Urijah Faber says he and Dominick Cruz have squashed their beef, open to doing the same with T.J. Dillashaw
Urijah Faber isn’t one to hold a grudge.
A UFC Hall of Famer and MMA pioneer, Faber’s career is known primarily for his run as the WEC featherweight champion and the series of rivalries he cultivated throughout his time in the sport, drawing attention to the lighter weight classes. Chief among those rivalries was his trilogy of fights with Dominick Cruz, but despite how heated things got between them back in the day, Faber says that now he and Cruz are one good terms with each other.
“I never really had that big of a problem with Dom,” Faber told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I enjoyed having an enemy. There was a time where he wanted what I had, I feel like, and he had a little chip on his shoulder. So he was doing some things that were immature at the time. I feel like he grew up. He more than created his own name and in some ways surpassed, with things like commentary and multiple world championships in the UFC. I think the chip got off his shoulder.”
Faber and Cruz fought three times across two weight classes, between 2007 and 2016, the last two fights serving as one of the defining features of the UFC’s early bantamweight division. Their rivalry eventually extended past just the two of them and out to members of Faber’s Team Alpha Male gym, including T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt. But Faber said it was a UFC PR event before their fight at UFC 132 that ultimately laid the groundwork for respect they have today.
“We had a really unique event before our third fight, maybe our second fight, where the PR people with the UFC just kind of overlooked and put us, a month before our fight was announced, together on a type of team building PR event where we went to go see the marine station in San Diego,” Faber said. “We’re there to meet people and all of a sudden we get drill sergeants in our face, they give us backpacks, and we do a whole day of the crucible, which is a three-day journey they have to do to become a marine. ... We were getting berated about the fallen soldiers and what it meant, and we had to work as a team. So we had like a two-day stint where we like actually became kind of friends, and then we went right back to being enemies. But we always communicated after that, even if it was to talk a little trash. ... I like Dom. And I remember when I retired, he handed me a poster... He’s made an effort and I’ve made an effort to be cool.”
But while Faber is on good terms with Cruz, not all of his rivalries have had such happy endings. Faber and Team Alpha Male had a notoriously messy split with Dillashaw after the former bantamweight champion left the gym, and Faber admits there’s a little more bad blood still left there, though he’s open to squashing it.
“I think T.J. is back in my area. ... I have a friend who was like, hey, T.J. just bought a house right next to me,” Faber said. “Honestly, I don’t know. That was such a weird transaction, how the whole thing went. We have a lot of mutual friends. I don’t know how much in contact [with them] he is or isn’t. I’ve got a lot of great friends.
“We probably will [make amends] now that we’re in the same area. I’ve walked by him once or twice at [events]. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. I don’t like negativity in my life. If there’s negativity there, I’ll squash it.”
Faber last competed at UFC 245 in December 2019, losing by knockout to Petr Yan. He was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2017 in the Modern Wing.