Grant Dawson sympathizes with Aljamain Sterling and Merab Dvalishvili.
Lately, the former bantamweight champ and his teammate have faced criticism — particularly from UFC CEO Dana White — because as longtime friends, they refuse to fight one another.
While Dawson hasn’t dealt with that same kind of pressure, he acknowledges that a similar situation could happen one day soon with five fighters from his American Top Team gym currently occupying spots in the UFC’s top 15 rankings.
Being surrounded by the best fighters in the world sounds like a good problem to have, but Dawson understands the potential conflicts that could eventually arise.
“We have probably the best gym in the world, especially for lightweight,” Dawson told MMA Fighting. “We have five guys that are in the top 15 at lightweight alone.
“One of my buddies says you can’t have everything. If you’re good at control, you’re probably not great at striking. If you’re great at striking, you’re probably not great at control. So you can’t have everything, so you want to be in a gym where the best guys in the world are going to push you every single day. The problem is, you might have to fight some of them someday.”
Dustin Poirier, Mateusz Gamrot, Arman Tsarukyan, and Renato Moicano all train alongside Dawson daily at the Florida-based gym. Dawson has nothing but praise for them and will continue to root for his teammates to find success, even if that ultimately comes at his expense.
“I wanted Dustin to win [his fight with Justin Gaethje], and I wanted Dustin to get another title shot,” Dawson said. “I think Michael Chandler says this, there’s enough wealth for everybody. I’m not hoping that Gamrot loses — why would I hope that he loses? It doesn’t help me at all. It doesn’t benefit me. It doesn’t benefit him.
“Same with Arman. Me and Arman, I don’t sit in my room and plot his downfall. I hope he wins. I hope he gets a title shot! If he wins the belt, ATT gets another belt! Great! Good for him. If he doesn’t win the belt, he’s out and I’m in.”
Dawson, who on Saturday faces Bobby Green in the UFC Vegas 80 main event, named Poirier and Moicano as two teammates in particular who are completely off-limits. There’s no title belt or paycheck that would make him accept either of those fights.
He’s not exactly champing at the bit to fight Gamrot or Tsarukyan either, but he also doesn’t believe that’s going to be a problem for them. There are plenty of fighters available at lightweight, and Dawson prefers to focus on those matchups rather than consider a potential showdown with a teammate or training partner.
“There are guys that I will fight at American Top Team under the right circumstances, under the right amount of money, under the right reward, like belts on the line, things like that,” Dawson said. “Then there are guys that I will not fight. My friendship and their friendship mean too much to me to risk that over a bunch of guys getting to watch us beat each other up.
“There are guys that I will fight. There are guys that I won’t fight, and really right now, you’ve just got to navigate through it.”
Dawson has witnessed plenty of teammates and friends avoid each other in the UFC, and hopes he’ll never have to make that choice. While some of those situations have torn apart teams in the past — look no further than Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans — Dawson feels no need to address fights against his friends, because it’s just not a problem plaguing him.
For now, anyway.
“Everybody’s talking s*** on Aljamain Sterling and Merab Dvalishvili, but I think they’re doing the right thing,” Dawson said. “I think those guys have been training together for so long, and I think those two guys are the two best guys in the division right now because of each other. So why would you want to give that up?
“Nobody ever told Khabib [Nurmagomedov] and Islam [Makhachev] that they had to fight each other. I feel like this is an issue that only American Top Team has to deal with. Dan Hooker and Alex Volkanovski don’t ever have to worry about fighting each other. Dan Hooker and Brad Riddell never had to worry about fighting each other.
“The only gym that they ever bring this up in is American Top Team, and that’s because we have so many good guys at the top that it’s hard for us to not have to fight each other. Everything is going to fall where it will. There are guys that I absolutely refuse to fight, and that’s all that really needs to be said about it.”
