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Dominick Cruz says the UFC is interested in matching him up against Henry Cejudo.
Will Dominick Cruz bend the knee to Henry ‘Triple C’ Cejudo?
Cejudo called Cruz out for a ‘tune-up’ fight last week and, according ‘The Dominator’, the UFC is ‘pretty interested’ in booking the matchup, per a recent interview with ESPN’s Ariel Helwani.
“I think UFC is pretty interested in booking us,” Cruz said, per MMA Mania’s Adam Guillen Jr. “You have to look at what’s been done. I set the most records in this division, first-ever to hold the title here. I had it for the longest time of anybody in the division and the people that I beat to get to the title, I didn’t have an easy road,” he added. “And not to mention my own setbacks that I’ve had on top of that.”
But, despite Cejudo being a concurrent two-division champion and holding title victories over the likes of Demetrious Johnson and T.J. Dillashaw, Cruz feels as though ‘The Messenger’ is still a ‘very green’ fighter who is lacking experience.
“The things that he has done in the sport, you have to tip your cap to him in the sport of wrestling. But in the sport of fighting, he is still very green, very new and extremely soft. This man has been catered to his entire life because coaches his whole life have seen him as a super athlete. So they always pull him out of the masses and take care of him, coddle him, baby him. He came straight out of high school to the Olympic training center to compete in wrestling,” Cruz said.
Cruz, the former WEC and UFC bantamweight champion, hasn’t fought in almost three years due to a series of recurring injuries. The 34-year-old last fought at UFC 207, where he lost his bantamweight title Cody ‘No Love’ Garbrandt. Despite his prolonged absence, Cruz is still considered one of the best fighters in the world and one of the greatest bantamweight champions of all time. The Alliance MMA standout gave no timeline for his return to the UFC.