Cody Garbrandt Quit Cannabis but Believes Sean O’Malley Shouldn’t Have

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Former Ultimate Fighting Championship bantamweight king Cody Garbrandt doesn’t think quitting marijuana has helped Sean O'Malley.

Garbrandt (14-6) is set to return after more than a year on the shelf to fight Raoni Barcelos (19-5) at UFC Atlanta this weekend at the State Farm Arena. The former UFC 135-pound king just completed three years of sobriety, a big achievement for him considering his family history of addiction.

Garbrandt also revealed that while he had been smoking marijuana since his teenage years, he has stopped that, too, six months ago.

“Six months I haven’t smoked weed either,” Garbrandt said at media day. “I have been smoking weed since I was 12-13 years old. So man, the clarity that I have going in, it’s nice… I come from a long line of addicts. My father’s an addict, been in prison my whole life… So it’s something I never wanted to do and I always wanted to make my mom super proud.”

Another fighter on a similar trajectory in his personal life is O’Malley. After losing his title against Merab Dvalishvili last year, O’Malley stopped smoking marijuana ahead of their rematch. While he had dropped a decision in the first matchup, “Suga” was submitted by Dvalishvili when they ran it back at UFC 316 last weekend in New Jersey. Judging by O’Malley’s performance, Garbrandt doesn’t think the former champ should have stopped smoking. On a more serious note, “No Love” says fighters need not always go on a quest to rediscover themselves after a loss.

“He should have kept smoking cause he looked like sh*t [laughs]... Sometimes you lose and you try to reinvent yourself and find yourself. At the end of the day, you know who you are, you know what you got to do. I know I’m one of the best fighters in the world. When you lose you got everybody in your ears saying, ‘You need to do this, you need to do that.’ Just remember what got you there at the end of the day.”

Garbrandt’s UFC career never quite found the proverbial second wind since he lost his first title defense against T.J. Dillashaw. Garbrandt is coming off a submission loss against Deiveson Figueiredo that saw a two-fight winning streak snapped.