T.J. Dillashaw says he wants to fight for the title at the beginning of 2022

Former two-time UFC bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw has revealed that he only needs three months to recover from his knee surgery and he wants to fight for the title at the beginning of the next year.

Former Bantamweight champion TJ was back into the octagon after completing a two-year USADA suspension. In his comeback fight, he fought the no.2 ranked bantamweight fighter in the UFC Cory Sandhagen. TJ got a hard-fought victory against the top contender in his division and now TJ is back at the top of his weight class and is eyeing a title shot. But in the fight, he had injured his knee and had to go through knee surgery.

Now as the division is moving on the current champion Aljamain Sterling is going to rematch against the former champion Petr Yan. While the bantamweight division is at the moment the most stacked division in the UFC, TJ feels he will be fighting for the belt soon, and after he recovers from the surgery he wants to get in the mix straight away.

TJ Dillashaw wants to fight for the belt

After the surgery is done TJ revealed that he won’t be out of the action for a long time and wants to get back to business pretty quickly.

“I had a medial meniscus bucket handle tear, a lateral meniscus tear, and a PCL tear,” Dillashaw told Brendan Schaub this past Saturday during “UFC 265 Calabasas Fight Companion.” “I’m just glad it wasn’t ACL. I’m happy with the results because it would’ve been nine months (if it would’ve been an ACL tear).

“I’m looking at a three-month recovery right now until I get back to training, (then) fight for the title at the beginning of next year.”

Dillashaw also recalls the exact moment where he blew out his knee in the fight against Sandhagen.

“So it was the last 30 seconds of the round, and I was in like a lazy leglock,” Dillashaw recalled. “We were in the 50/50 position, and I was completely out of it, but I was chilling. I knew I won the round, so I was going to sit up top and let the round finish out, but then he turned and started punching me. So I was like, ‘All right, b*tch,’ and I started hitting him back for my own ground-and-pound.

“I came in hard on my own leg and started ground-and-pounding, and we got into a scramble. He tried to get up on his feet, and I went to sit up on top, so I leaned my chest over my own body, and at the same time my LCL just went, ‘pow.’

“It was loud, dude. I’m surprised he didn’t hear it or feel it because I heard it when it happened. As soon as the round was over, I sat down and I said, ‘My knee is f*cked.’ They bleeped it out because it’s ESPN.”

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