UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz has never been afraid to fire off a little trash talk, but the rivalry between he and upcoming title challenger Cody Garbrandt has reached unusual heights in the lead-up to UFC 207.
In late November, Garbrandt’s girlfriend uploaded an old, mocking screenshot to Instagram of Cruz’s only career loss at the hands of Urijah Faber at WEC 26. The post was seemingly done in retaliation for a similar social media post by Cruz that showcased Garbrandt suffering a brutal knockout loss back in his amateur days. But then things took a curious turn: Cruz appeared in the comments section and warned Garbrandt’s significant other to not “get involved in big boy stuff.”
Garbrandt responded to Cruz in kind, calling the move “b*tch mode.” But when asked on a recent edition of The MMA Hour, Cruz simply laughed off the exchange.
“That whole thing that happened with his girlfriend, first of all, I’ll just squash that immediately,” Cruz said. “I have no problem with his girlfriend or women in general. I love women, I respect women. I’m a mama’s boy, to be perfectly honest. By me going on there, I got tagged by her, apparently — I didn’t even really realize who she was at first until looked into it, and she tagged me in that thing. So all I said, was actually very nicely, I said, ‘don’t get involved in this stuff. Your job is to take care of your boy toy, plain and simple.’
“I don’t know how they are, how they do it, but I don’t want her involved in this stuff. And to me, it’s his job to tell her that stuff, to keep her out of it. But clearly, she probably wears the pants in the relationship."
Cruz: Garbrandt’s girlfriend clearly ‘wears the pants in the relationship’
