“Talking is just talking, a fight is fighting; T.J. is the type of guy that would rather fight than talk, and I think that’s because he’s not that smart. That doesn’t mean he’s not ready to fight on that day. I don’t look at it like it’s any type of advantage other than we’re just in front of the cameras. I don’t want to do these interviews any more than him probably, but I’m there, I’ve got to do them, and I’m going to do them to the best of my ability. The truth is, people want to hear what we have to say as athletes and they don’t want to just see what we do as fighters. That’s usually not enough to interest people. That doesn’t sell a lot of tickets. They want to hear why you believe in yourself leading up to the fight on top of going in there and putting on a good performance, so I’m just doing all angles of things. T.J. still hasn’t figured that out yet, but hopefully he’ll figure it out soon and sell some tickets.”
-Dominick Cruz takes further shots at T.J. Dillashaw during a media conference call for their Jan. 17 title tilt (via MMAJunkie.com).
Penick’s Analysis: Cruz is doing his best to try to strike some type of chord on Dillashaw, and whether it works to rile him up to get him off his game will be seen next weekend. I don’t believe Dillashaw’s ability – or lack thereof – to effectively trash talk necessarily has all that much to do with intelligence; some just aren’t comfortable in that role. He’s been plenty smart in learning and improving where it counts in the fight game, so he’s gotten to the spot he now holds intelligently, but there are varying levels of said intelligence. Cruz looks at the game in a very different way than most; he’s more analytical, he breaks things down very well, and can recognize things in the way some others can’t. In that way it’s likely he’d make a good coach eventually, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to prove better than Dillashaw in Boston. Regardless, with more and more talk comes more and more to back up, and he’s set himself up with a lot to get done in this fight.
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Maybe he would rather fight than talk because he’s, you know, a fighter.