Following T.J. Dillashaw’s USADA suspension for EPO usage, the former bantamweight champion has had to deal with scrutiny from all angles, including both participants who will be lining up to succeed him as the new bantamweight champion at UFC 238, Henry Cejudo and Marlon Moraes. For Henry Cejudo’s part, he refuses to ever face Dillashaw again in light of the recent news. As for his UFC 238 opponent Marlon Moraes, he has taken the opposite position:
“Yes I want to fight him 100-percent,” Moraes told MMA Weekly about Dillahaw. “I don’t care if he’s taking, if he’s not taking, I want to put my hands on him one day. I want to make him pay for everyone he made pay. I want to put him in a bad spot and show him what is real. I know I’m better than this guy, especially now knowing what he was doing.”
And what T.J. Dillashaw was “doing,” Marlon Moraes claims, was putting his own talent in question. What’s more, cases such as these raises doubt about the talent pool in the entire sport:
“My mind as a fan and as a fighter to look up to a guy and he is good but I don’t know was he going to be like that if he wasn’t cheating? It sucks,” Moraes said. “It puts you in a bad position because we don’t know. You don’t believe the system anymore. You don’t know who’s doing, who’s not doing and it sucks.”
As for T.J. Dillashaw, there are two things that Marlon Moraes can say for certain: we will not see the same T.J. Dillashaw upon his return and that cheating or no cheating, Dillashaw would come out on the losing end if the two ever faced:
“He’ll never be the same. I can guarantee he will never be the same,” Moraes said. “There’s no way that guy can beat me. He can be out forever and then come back and I’ll be more than happy to welcome him back to the UFC and defend my belt against him.”
Whom do you think would win in a fight between T.J. Dillashaw and Marlon Moraes?
