T.J. Dillashaw: I would have finished Cory Sandhagen if my leg was healthy

Had he not injured his knee, T.J. Dillashaw is confident his fight with Cory Sandhagen wouldn’t have gone the distance.

Dillashaw (16-4 MMA, 12-4 UFC) returned from a two-year U.S. Anti-Doping Agency suspension to edge out rising contender Sandhagen (14-3 MMA, 7-2 UFC) in the main event of UFC on ESPN 27, repositioning himself in the title picture.

In a back-and-forth battle, two of the three judges rewarded Dillashaw for his pressure and control, despite Sandhagen’s ability to bust him up. But the former two-time UFC bantamweight champion explained that after suffering a displaced bucket handle tear of his lateral meniscus and a lateral collateral ligament, his mobility was completely compromised, especially in the grappling exchanges.

“Cory is really lucky that my knee was messed up when I took his back so many times, because it would have been a different story if I was actually able to lift him or throw my hooks in,” Dillashaw said on Bruce Buffer’s “IT’S TIME!!!” podcast. “When I took his back, I tried doing a couple of trips. But every time – I remember lifting him in the second round, I took his back and my knee completely buckled on me and I was like ‘Oh, we can’t do that anymore.’

“So a lot of those back controls would have been – I believe I would have finished him if my leg would have been healthy. But you know what? Maybe it’s better I didn’t. I got to show that I have that grit, I have that comeback mentality, I have that fight-through-adversity, and I showed that my cardio is second to none. No one is going to outpace me. I work harder than everyone. So maybe it worked out in my favor. I built a lot of fans back in that fight.”

Most of the media scored the fight in favor of Sandhagen, but when factoring in the judges’ criteria for scoring, Dillashaw has no doubt that he did enough to win.

“Going into the decision, I heard split – got me a little nervous. But I knew that it was a tough-fought fight,” Dillashaw said. “I knew that Cory did a great job. He definitely did a good job of using his range and his footwork and his striking accuracy and things like that. But you’ve got to remember, this fight is fought on rounds. He did do most of his damage in Round 2 when I came out after I popped my knee.

“Most of the damage he did in the fight was in Round 2. Even if you give him two rounds, all of the damage he did were in those two rounds he did it in. The other rounds, I was controlling the distance, I was controlling the pace, I was on his back. I won. I did what I had to do on one leg to get that win. To beat a guy like Cory Sandhagen on one leg, I ain’t going to be mad at that.”