Cody Diarden recently revealed why he accepted a fight against teammate Bruno Silva after initially turning it down.
Darden (16-5) and Silva (13-5) are scheduled to meet in a flyweight bout this weekend at UFC on ESPN 60 at The Apex in Las Vegas, and Darden said he was initially hesitant to accept the offer to face his American Top Team teammate.
“I’m not sure I’d be able to beat him,” Durden said at the UFC on ESPN 60 media day.
“I didn’t really want to fight my teammate, but we have the same manager, Ali Abdelaziz,” Darden said at UFC media day. “At first I turned the fight down. I didn’t want to fight my teammate. But then Bruno accepted the fight and said we’re not guys. That lit a fire under me. I was like, ‘All right, motherfucker, I’m going to fight now’…He’s explosive, he’s going to come forward and try to wrestle me, but I want violence, I want to see blood. I’m going for his neck, I’m not going to go in the cage to wrestle.
“It’s really changed my mindset overall. I’ve always been the type of person who doesn’t like it when someone gets in the way of what I want to do. I was always hesitant to fight my teammate even when he said he’d fight me. Now it doesn’t matter if I practice or not. From now on, if someone gets in my way, I’m going to fight them.”
After spending a few years with Fight Ready and Pit Bull Brothers, Silva moved to ATT in Coconut Creek, Fla., about four months ago. Meanwhile, Darden’s home gym is ATT Team Lima in Georgia, but he travels to the gym’s Coconut Creek facility for fight camp. Both fighters currently attend camp side-by-side, but Darden doesn’t think Silva would benefit much from watching him.
“Bruno ended up moving to the first team. [ATT] Coconut Creek is where I always have my fight camp. My home gym is American Top Team Lima with Douglas and Diego Lima. After I won the fight, I came back to Coconut Creek and people were like, “What are you doing?” I don’t care. I’m not going to help him. Just let them watch me train. He probably had some buddies in the gym who were with him and hounded him and watched me train. It could go either way. So you’ll see me get my hand raised on Saturday night.
Darden’s four-fight winning streak was snapped when he suffered a submission loss to Tagir Uranbekov at UFC 296 in December 2023. “The Bulldog,” meanwhile, is riding a three-fight winning streak and is set to return from a 15-month hiatus.
