Cody Garbrandt knows exactly who his next opponent should be. In fact, he thinks it’s rather obvious. Why else did the UFC put him in the main event of UFC Fight Night 88 while making the bout between Bryan Caraway and Aljamain Sterling the “Fight Pass featured prelim”?
“I thought that’s how it was going to be matched up,” Garbrandt told MMAjunkie. “For sure, I wanted the winner of (Sterling) and Caraway.”
He even has a date and a venue all picked out, seeing as how the UFC will be visiting his home state of Ohio for an event at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on Sept. 10 – UFC 203.
And since Caraway won a split decision over the previously unbeaten Sterling on the same card that saw Garbrandt knock out the previously unbeaten Thomas Almeida, wouldn’t it just make sense for the two of them to fight next?
Garbrandt seems to think so. Caraway? He’s not so hot on the idea, though he can see why it sounds good to Garbrandt.
Bryan Caraway
“I completely understand why he wants to fight me,” Caraway said. “He’s got that championship belt on his mind, as anyone in our division should have. He wants to fight up the rankings to get himself closer to that. At the same time, I want to fight up, too.”
The way Caraway sees it, he’s already done enough to earn a shot at the UFC bantamweight title. He just beat the fighter who occupied the No. 4 spot in the UFC’s rankings. In the latest poll, he moved up to claim that position for himself. If he doesn’t get the winner of the UFC 199 bantamweight title fight between champion Dominick Cruz and challenger Urijah Faber, he said, he at least wants someone ahead of him in the rankings.
“I want to fight the guys right ahead of me,” Caraway said. “I want to fight the winner of Faber and Cruz. I feel like I’ve already earned my spot to fight for the world title by beating the No. 4 guy and the No. 6 guy. My last two wins I’ve beat higher-ranked opponents than Garbrandt has. I think a great matchup for him would be (John) Dodson. That’s a phenomenal matchup, and they’re right next to each other in the rankings. It just makes sense.”
Somehow, Garbrandt remains unswayed by the rankings-based logic of it all. In fact, he said, the more Caraway treats him like a step down in competition, the more fixated he becomes on getting in the cage with him.
“He wants to say that fighting me would be taking a step back; it’s not,” Garbrandt said. “He’s just scared. He’s scared to fight me. I want to make him respect me. He fought well against (Sterling) and came back, but I’m on a different level. Him saying I’m a step back, that pissed me off. I’m really upset with that, and I want his head.”
But Caraway insists he never said Garbrandt would be a step back as a fighter – merely a step back in the rankings.
“I just said I want to fight guys who are ranked above me,” Caraway said. “He does too. If I were ranked 13th or 14th, you think he’d be running around saying he wants to fight Bryan Caraway?”
For Garbrandt, the numbers next to each fighter’s name don’t mean as much as the outcomes of the fights and the quality of the competition. The way he sees it, a split-decision victory in a close fight with Sterling doesn’t qualify Caraway for the next title shot.
“He’s trying to hold onto his ranking, not wanting to fight any top fighters,” Garbrandt said. “Before this, he had a win over Eddie Wineland, who was coming off a long layoff. I’m sitting there, not ranked, asking for all these top-10 fighters and not getting them. Finally I get one, and look what I did to him. I believe I deserve to fight Caraway.”
As for Caraway, he’s unbothered by Garbrandt’s claim that he’s scared to fight, or that he’ll get knocked out if the two men do meet at UFC 203 in Cleveland.
“I don’t think anyone can knock me out in our division, and I’m not scared to fight anybody,” Caraway said. “Obviously, the guy doesn’t know my history. You don’t fight no-holds-barred, vale tudo fights with no gloves back in the day when there were hardly any rules, if you’re afraid to fight anybody. That’s just ridiculous. You don’t get to be where I am, to have the resume I have, if you’re afraid to fight somebody. You just don’t.”
For more on UFC 203, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
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