“The Dominator” is calling it a career.
Former two-time Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz returns to action after another two-year layoff next month (Sat., Feb. 22, 2025) in the co-main event of UFC Seattle against No. 9 ranked Rob Font.
Today (Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025), during an interview with Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen on their ESPN+ show, Cruz announced it would be his last UFC fight after teasing it for a few months.
“I’m gonna do one more,” Cruz said. “I’ve been wanting to take a fight, but I did need to get my body in order. It’s no secret, I’ve had a lot of injuries in my career, so I like to make sure I’m ready and not just taking something where I’m hurt. I don’t need to fight that way anymore.“
Injuries plagued Cruz throughout his UFC career, preventing him from really cementing himself as the best Bantamweight of all time – even though he still has a case.
“When you’re a champion or a number one contender, you just got to stay on the line, because people are going to take your spot, right? Well, I’m already not in the top five, so let’s say I fought three more times. They’re still not going to probably give me a title shot,” Cruz said. “So I just take a fight when it comes and when it fits, and I enjoy fighting. I’m from the era where you didn’t get paid a ton to fight. You just enjoyed fighting, and that’s why you usually started. So I enjoy fighting.”
The former champion was angling for a rematch against Henry Cejudo for his final fight, but it never came to be because, according to Cruz, “Triple C’ didn’t want it.
“I wanted the Henry fight. I wanted rematches,” Cruz said. “Henry won’t take that fight. He just won’t. So they just put him on the same card as me. Which is funny to me, Sean Shelby did that. I didn’t know that they were gonna put us on the same card. But you know, Shelby knows what he’s doing. I don’t know why Henry wouldn’t rematch me. I really don’t. I mean, the only thing I could think of is I kind of, with my words, really embarrassed him a lot, and he probably doesn’t want to go through that again. But, I mean, we’re gonna fight at the end of it.”
Cruz, 39, has not fought since his knockout loss to Marlon Vera at UFC San Diego in 2022 (watch highlights).
However, the most heartbreaking aspect of this upcoming retirement is simple: UFC fans will never get to see Cruz vs. Jose Aldo.
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