It’s been a long, strange road to Cruz vs. Dillashaw…but we’ve arrived

Dominick Cruz against T.J. Dillashaw is an awesome fight. What goes into awesome? Just a bunch of the usual ingredients…air casts, cadaver tendons, the scalp of Nosferatu, protractors, a few sands of the hour glass, the soul of Takeya Mizugaki, things like that.

Back when he’d only been shelved in the neighborhood of three years with ACL surgeries, a debate swelled up as to whether Cruz should be rushed back into a title fight against an active beast like Renan Barao. The competitor Cruz wanted it, and it was momentarily booked for UFC 169, but people were a little skeptical. Out three years? Against Barao, who hadn’t lost in a decade? That’s suicide, son.

Yet Cruz injured his groin and the thing was moot. Cruz was stripped of his title.

Then, as always happens in the fight game, perception went through the cheese grater. Urijah Faber, who filled in for Cruz against Barao and lost, urged the UFC to book his training partner T.J. Dillashaw into a title fight with Barao. The UFC did. Dillashaw, looking remarkably like Cruz, shocked the world (or at least a large fraction of the diehard MMA community) by dominating Barao, finishing him spectacularly in the fifth. He beat Joe Soto in his first title defense three months later at UFC 177, but the less said about that the better.

As for Cruz, he finally made it back to the Octagon at UFC 178, and, looking like a bowstring that had been pulled back for three years and let go, he destroyed Mizugaki in 61 seconds. That served as an important reminder that perhaps everything that had gone on in the bantamweight division in his absence was a masquerade. Now to get to the bottom of things, we had Cruz set up to fight Dillashaw.

Or did we?

As he was getting ready for Dillashaw, Cruz suffered an ACL on his other knee, solidifying his status as the most snake-bitten fighter of all time. Dillashaw instead got a Barao rematch, and this time disposed of him in the fourth round. One round quicker than last time. No fluky business this time. There’s no such thing as a two-time defending fluke. All the while Cruz, going through another agonizing period of convalescence and introspection, stood by as the accolades fell just outside his window.

So, just to review for those keeping track at home: In the space of a year-and-a-half, Barao was too much for Cruz (presumably), Cruz was too much for Mizugaki (literally), Dillashaw was too much for Barao (twice), Dillashaw solidified himself at the top of the division, Cruz remains crammed uncomfortably in that same space, and now Cruz and Dillashaw — which takes place on free television on January 17 in Boston — looks like a ridiculous, truth-telling, mind-bending fight, regardless if Cruz is coming off an injury again or not.

Why? Because Dillashaw fights so much like Dominick Cruz. Don’t tell Dillashaw or Cruz that, because they hate that naïve BS. Ask them if they are similar and it descends into a breakdown of footwork and angles and feints and dekes and combinations that are either deployed or not, set-ups, takedowns, sleight-of-hand, level-changes, clinchwork and how they don’t resemble each other in the least when doing these things.

They even argue almost exactly the same.

The technical intrigue in a fight like this goes a long, long way for the imagination. Whether or not you like to watch fighters mastering the use of space and geometry over (potentially) five rounds is a question of taste, but you can’t argue the sublime sense of self-preservation of Cruz (in the cage, anyway), nor the mellifluous blitzkrieg nature of Dillashaw, and how those things might play out when they come together. They are both smart. Very smart. They split mere seconds into whole narratives. That one could be the facsimile of the other, like mirrors with consciences and pride, only adds to the intrigue.

But what really hits the imagination is the long-awaited defining of a division that for so long danced around a pothole. Before his series of injuries, Cruz was the master of 135. He personally created the flyweight division by beating Joseph Benavidez twice, and later Demetrious Johnson. He presented himself as the end of all feel-good-stories who made their way towards his belt. Since 2007, nobody has defeated him. Hardly anybody hits him flush. Injuries alone have made him begin to vanish from the playing field. That 61-second cameo against Mizugaki in-between has only added to the many curiosities of this fight.

Is Dillashaw part of the masquerade? Is he only renting Cruz’s belt? Or has Dillashaw become today’s Cruz? What happens when today’s Cruz meets Cruz himself?

What an awesome fight.

Dominick Cruz against T.J. Dillashaw is an awesome fight. What goes into awesome? Just a bunch of the usual ingredients…air casts, cadaver tendons, the scalp of Nosferatu, protractors, a few sands of the hour glass, the soul of Takeya Mizugaki, things like that.

Back when he’d only been shelved in the neighborhood of three years with ACL surgeries, a debate swelled up as to whether Cruz should be rushed back into a title fight against an active beast like Renan Barao. The competitor Cruz wanted it, and it was momentarily booked for UFC 169, but people were a little skeptical. Out three years? Against Barao, who hadn’t lost in a decade? That’s suicide, son.

Yet Cruz injured his groin and the thing was moot. Cruz was stripped of his title.

Then, as always happens in the fight game, perception went through the cheese grater. Urijah Faber, who filled in for Cruz against Barao and lost, urged the UFC to book his training partner T.J. Dillashaw into a title fight with Barao. The UFC did. Dillashaw, looking remarkably like Cruz, shocked the world (or at least a large fraction of the diehard MMA community) by dominating Barao, finishing him spectacularly in the fifth. He beat Joe Soto in his first title defense three months later at UFC 177, but the less said about that the better.

As for Cruz, he finally made it back to the Octagon at UFC 178, and, looking like a bowstring that had been pulled back for three years and let go, he destroyed Mizugaki in 61 seconds. That served as an important reminder that perhaps everything that had gone on in the bantamweight division in his absence was a masquerade. Now to get to the bottom of things, we had Cruz set up to fight Dillashaw.

Or did we?

As he was getting ready for Dillashaw, Cruz suffered an ACL on his other knee, solidifying his status as the most snake-bitten fighter of all time. Dillashaw instead got a Barao rematch, and this time disposed of him in the fourth round. One round quicker than last time. No fluky business this time. There’s no such thing as a two-time defending fluke. All the while Cruz, going through another agonizing period of convalescence and introspection, stood by as the accolades fell just outside his window.

So, just to review for those keeping track at home: In the space of a year-and-a-half, Barao was too much for Cruz (presumably), Cruz was too much for Mizugaki (literally), Dillashaw was too much for Barao (twice), Dillashaw solidified himself at the top of the division, Cruz remains crammed uncomfortably in that same space, and now Cruz and Dillashaw — which takes place on free television on January 17 in Boston — looks like a ridiculous, truth-telling, mind-bending fight, regardless if Cruz is coming off an injury again or not.

Why? Because Dillashaw fights so much like Dominick Cruz. Don’t tell Dillashaw or Cruz that, because they hate that naïve BS. Ask them if they are similar and it descends into a breakdown of footwork and angles and feints and dekes and combinations that are either deployed or not, set-ups, takedowns, sleight-of-hand, level-changes, clinchwork and how they don’t resemble each other in the least when doing these things.

They even argue almost exactly the same.

The technical intrigue in a fight like this goes a long, long way for the imagination. Whether or not you like to watch fighters mastering the use of space and geometry over (potentially) five rounds is a question of taste, but you can’t argue the sublime sense of self-preservation of Cruz (in the cage, anyway), nor the mellifluous blitzkrieg nature of Dillashaw, and how those things might play out when they come together. They are both smart. Very smart. They split mere seconds into whole narratives. That one could be the facsimile of the other, like mirrors with consciences and pride, only adds to the intrigue.

But what really hits the imagination is the long-awaited defining of a division that for so long danced around a pothole. Before his series of injuries, Cruz was the master of 135. He personally created the flyweight division by beating Joseph Benavidez twice, and later Demetrious Johnson. He presented himself as the end of all feel-good-stories who made their way towards his belt. Since 2007, nobody has defeated him. Hardly anybody hits him flush. Injuries alone have made him begin to vanish from the playing field. That 61-second cameo against Mizugaki in-between has only added to the many curiosities of this fight.

Is Dillashaw part of the masquerade? Is he only renting Cruz’s belt? Or has Dillashaw become today’s Cruz? What happens when today’s Cruz meets Cruz himself?

What an awesome fight.