TJ Dillashaw exploded at UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling in a heated press conference outburst, making a crude joke about putting his "nuts" in his rival's mouth.
The former champion never lost his belt, but was stripped after he tested positive for a banned substance which he admitted to using in order to lose weight for his fight with Henry Cejudo at flyweight in 2019. He served a two-year suspension before returning last year to face Corey Sandhagen and earn himself another chance at the belt.
During his time away from the division, the belt was picked up by Cejudo, who vacated it to retire the following year which allowed Petr Yan to beat Jose Aldo and claim the gold. Yan lost his belt to Sterling in controversial circumstances when he was disqualified in their first meeting, but the American comfortably won their rematch, leading to a showdown with Dillashaw.
However, Sterling isn't sure that Dillashaw is clean heading into this bout, despite his having passed 34 tests with USADA since his return to action. The pair got into it at the pre-fight press conference, with Dillashaw joking that the champion was about to lose to a "cheater" on Saturday night.
“You’re going to get your a** whipped by a cheater, motherf***er - how do you feel about that?" Dillashaw said in a heated press conference exchange, before Sterling insisted that he "speak up like a man". “If he’s so worried about it, he can come test me himself. He can test these nuts in his mouth."
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“This DJ Jazzy Jeff-looking motherf*cker is going to be down there saying like, ‘Test, test 1-2. Is this working?’ He’s going to be a rapper supposedly. He’s already been a failed actor. Now he’s going to be a failed rapper.”
Sterling believes that Dillashaw's absence from the UFC's documentary series Embedded is indicative of his using performance enhancers again. He argues that it was a similar absence that flagged him as suspicious before the Cejudo bout in 2019 that ultimately saw him caught.
“For some reason, I haven’t seen TJ in any of the ‘Embedded’ episodes. That’s how he got caught last time,” Sterling said. “I wonder if there’s something going on again that might be a little fishy, TJ”
