Cody Garbrandt was once regarded as one of the future stars of the UFC when he captured bantamweight gold in 2016.
When Cody Garbrandt clashed against one of the all-time bantamweight greats in Dominick Cruz in 2016, nobody expected him to go on and produce one of the greatest title performances in the promotion’s history.
This coming Saturday at UFC Atlanta, the former UFC bantamweight champion returns to action when he takes on veteran Brazilian, Raoni Barcelos.
‘No Love’s’ last outing came at UFC 300 when he took on former UFC flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo, unfortunately losing via a second round submission.
Cody Garbrandt suffered horrendous downfall after all-time performance
Despite Garbrandt’s impressive rise up the bantamweight ranks and subsequent title win early in his career, things rapidly went downhill for the hard-hitting star.
A year after dethroning ‘The Dominator’, Garbrandt was scheduled to defend his title against his longtime rival, TJ Dillashaw.
Garbrandt and Dillashaw had a huge rivalry because Dillashaw used to be a training partner of Garbrandt’s before leaving the gym and joining a new team.
In their clash at UFC 217, Garbrandt knocked Dillashaw down in the final seconds of round one which saved the challenger from being finished. And then in round two, Dillashaw came out and scored a knockout win.
The two rematched just under a year later at UFC 227 and Dillashaw once again scored an impressive knockout, handing Garbrandt back-to-back losses for the first time in his career.
Unfortunately, though, things went from bad to worse for ‘No Love’ who attempted to climb back up the bantamweight ladder but was handed his third knockout loss in a row when he fought Pedro Munhoz at UFC 235.
Joe Rogan pleaded with Garbrandt to retire after three brutal KO losses
At one point, Garbrandt was labeled as ‘the UFC’s next star’ by UFC boss, Dana White, but after three brutal losses in a row, fans called for the star to retire before things got worse.
UFC icon, Joe Rogan also claimed that he hoped ‘No Love’ would retire after suffering his loss to Munhoz.
“Tough road for Cody,” Rogan said before Garbrandt’s fight against Trevin Jones in 2023.
“Another guy who was the elite of the elite at one point in time. Someone knocked him out very early on in his career, real bad… With Cody Garbrandt after all those KO losses, you’ve got to wonder, how many more does he have left?
“When a guy gets KO’d a gang of times, like, there’s a lot of people that it gets to a certain point in time and you’re like, ‘Someone needs to step in and stop this from happening.'” Rogan continued.
Garbrandt rebounded from three brutal KOs with an incredible win over Raphael Assuncao, but was then dealt two more brutal losses against Rob Font and Kai Kara-France.