5 times that former sparring partners faced off for UFC gold

#4. Tito Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell – UFC 66

Once close friends, Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell's rivalry turned nasty when the UFC light-heavyweight title was involved

Perhaps the greatest example of a friendship between sparring partners going badly wrong remains the infamous UFC rivalry between Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.

Their feud arguably defined the UFC in the mid-2000’s. UFC 66, which saw them battle for the UFC light heavyweight title, held the promotion’s pay-per-view buyrate record for three years.

The two fighters initially began training together when Ortiz held the light heavyweight title. Coincidentally, at the time they were also managed by future UFC president Dana White.

For a long time, ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ claimed his friendship with Liddell was so strong that the duo had formed a pact to never face off inside the octagon. However, when ‘The Iceman’ began to cut a path of destruction through the division, it was clear he deserved a title shot.

Ortiz refused to go through with it, though, and ended up losing both his friendship with Liddell and his title in a clash with Randy Couture, who beat ‘The Iceman’ in his stead. With the friendship dead and buried, the two men finally faced off at UFC 47, with Liddell winning via second-round TKO. That victory put ‘The Iceman’ on a route to the top of the UFC. He eventually defeated Couture for the title at UFC 52.

At that stage, he and Ortiz had become hated rivals. When the two former sparring partners faced off with the title on the line at UFC 66, it felt like one of the biggest fights in UFC history.

Liddell came out on top again, this time stopping Ortiz in the third round. Despite showing respect to one another after the fight, it took more than a decade, as well as a third fight with Ortiz winning, for the former friends to finally bury the hatchet.

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#3: T.J. Dillashaw vs. Cody Garbrandt – UFC 217

Once friends and sparring partners, T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt fell out big time when Dillashaw departed their team in 2014

When then-WEC featherweight champion Urijah Faber formed Team Alpha Male in 2004, the idea was to bring together some of the best lighter-weight fighters on the planet to train with one another.

However, ‘The California Kid’ probably didn’t realize that over a decade later, he would also help to kickstart one of the biggest feuds in UFC history between former teammates T.J. Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt.

In this instance, the rivalry began due to the influence of former UFC fighter Duane ‘Bang’ Ludwig, who acted as Team Alpha Male’s coach from 2012 to 2014. Both Dillashaw and Garbrandt trained with the team under Ludwig, but it was Dillashaw who found UFC success first.

After entering the promotion via the 14th season of The Ultimate Fighter, he climbed to the top of the bantamweight division. He did what his mentor Faber was unable to do by unseating UFC bantamweight champion Renan Barao at UFC 173.

However, after largely crediting Ludwig’s coaching for the win, Dillashaw chose to follow ‘Bang’ when he abandoned Team Alpha Male to form his own training camp in Colorado. Naturally, that didn’t sit right with the champion’s teammates, most notably Garbrandt.

‘No Love’ immediately began to snipe at Dillashaw in the media, accusing him of being a bad sparring partner who would look to injure his teammates. He also claimed that Dillashaw was a known user of PED’s. So when Garbrandt defeated Dominick Cruz, who had beaten Dillashaw, to win the UFC bantamweight title, it was clear that the two men were on a collision course.

After a lengthy build-up to their fight, including a bad-tempered stint as rival coaches on TUF, the former friends faced off at UFC 217. In a wild fight that saw multiple knockdowns, Dillashaw reclaimed his title via TKO, before ending the feud for good with a second win in their rematch.