Former
Ultimate Fighting Championship bantamweight king Cody
Garbrandt doesn’t think quitting marijuana has helped Sean
O’Malley.
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Garbrandt (14-6) is set to return after more than a year on the
shelf to fight Raoni
Barcelos (19-5) at
UFC Atlanta this weekend at the State Farm Arena. The former
UFC 135-pound king just completed three years of sobriety, a big
achievement for him considering his family history of
addiction.
Garbrandt also revealed that while he had been smoking marijuana
since his teenage years, he has stopped that, too, six months
ago.
“Six months I haven’t smoked weed either,” Garbrandt said at media
day. “I have been smoking weed since I was 12-13 years old. So man,
the clarity that I have going in, it’s nice… I come from a long
line of addicts. My father’s an addict, been in prison my whole
life… So it’s something I never wanted to do and I always wanted to
make my mom super proud.”
Another fighter on a similar trajectory in his personal life is
O’Malley. After losing his title against Merab
Dvalishvili last year, O’Malley stopped smoking marijuana ahead
of their rematch. While he had dropped a decision in the first
matchup, “Suga” was submitted by Dvalishvili when they ran it back
at
UFC 316 last weekend in New Jersey. Judging by O’Malley’s
performance, Garbrandt doesn’t think the former champ should have
stopped smoking. On a more serious note, “No Love” says fighters
need not always go on a quest to rediscover themselves after a
loss.
“He should have kept smoking cause he looked like sh*t [laughs]…
Sometimes you lose and you try to reinvent yourself and find
yourself. At the end of the day, you know who you are, you know
what you got to do. I know I’m one of the best fighters in the
world. When you lose you got everybody in your ears saying, ‘You
need to do this, you need to do that.’ Just remember what got you
there at the end of the day.”
Garbrandt’s UFC career never quite found the proverbial second wind
since he lost his first title defense against T.J.
Dillashaw. Garbrandt is coming off a submission loss against
Deiveson
Figueiredo that saw a two-fight winning streak snapped.