[autotag]Cody Garbrandt[/autotag] is open to both flyweight and bantamweight after UFC 269.
In his flyweight debut, Garbrandt (12-5 MMA, 7-5 UFC) suffered a first-round TKO loss to Kai Kara-France at UFC 269, but the former bantamweight champion insists he physically felt good despite shedding an extra 10 pounds.
Garbrandt hit the flyweight mark with no issues at weigh-ins and still potentially sees 125 pounds in his foreseeable future.
“The camp was great, felt good, the weight cut was amazing,” Garbrandt said on his “Rollin with the Homies” podcast. “Rehydration, refuel process was good, I felt great at 125. I just got caught with a good punch in there and I just couldn’t recover. After I got hit with the punch, got back up, kinda felt OK to where I was moving, coming forward, but I still wasn’t like all there and then I took him down, and then we got into a scramble and came back to our feet and it just felt like I was on a slant.
“I was like damn, I’m still not recovered. He brought the pressure and he brought the combinations and was able to capitalize so hats off to him. He was able to do his job and I still feel like 25 is a great weight for me. I love what I was able to do inside the camp. What I’m taking away from this past camp or the last six months of getting the weight down or three months of camp that we did was just the positive stuff from it.”
With Garbrandt’s name and early success at bantamweight which led to a UFC title, “No Love” is also open to a move back up to his original weight class.
One name that stands out is [autotag]Sean O’Malley[/autotag], who’s not only continuously called him out, but even got in his face at the UFC 269 pre-fight press conference. O’Malley (15-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) competed on the same night as Garbrandt, stopping his teammate Raulian Paiva in the first round.
“Like I said, I felt great at 125,” Garbrandt said. “I think that’s something I have to decide, whether I – 35, 25, I feel great at both. I think if I went to 35, I would do things a little differently. Keep my weight up throughout the camp.”
He continued, “There’s a lot of good matchups. Sean O’Malley, I really want to whoop his ass. That’s a fight that’s looming. Hopefully, that could possibly be my next one. I want that fight so I’d like to stay at 35. He might fight me now because I’m not in the rankings at 35 and he’s ranked so that’ll be a good fight. You got to respect his skills, he leveled up a little bit with the Raulian fight, caught him early on, but we know that. The only way he was gonna win was catching him early on and he did that. He did his job, hats off to him. He’s now in the rankings so I have to go back up to 35 and whoop his ass, but we’ll decide, we’ll figure it out.”
After an unbeaten start to his pro MMA career, including a masterclass over Dominick Cruz to capture the UFC bantamweight title, Garbrandt has gone 1-5 in his past six fights. It’s a rough spot for the 30-year-old, but Garbrandt is far from done and won’t let the naysayers bring him down.
“When it’s over, I say it’s over,” Garbrandt said. “Not the fans, not Dana, not anybody but me. When I know and I understand that I don’t have it anymore, I don’t have what it takes to push myself and train to be prepared to go out there and give my best shot to win, then I’ll be done. I can honestly say that, and I have a good support system around me that’ll be like, ‘Look, let’s look at something else.’ But that’s so far down the road. I’m 30 years old, I still have a lot left in the tank to do. We’ll make the corrections, we’ll figure it out.”
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