It seems ridiculous considering his placement on this weekend’s UFC 178 preliminaries, but, believe it or not, bantamweight Dominick Cruz was once one of the most dominant champions in UFC history. At the height of his career, just entering his athletic prime at 26, he was nearly untouchable.
All the great little men of the era gave him a tumble—Urijah Faber, Joseph Benavidez and Demetrious Johnson.
None of them came close.
After dispatching Faber, his great rival, at UFC 132, and Johnson on the Versus Network, Cruz was firmly entrenched in the sport’s pound-for-pound top 10 as 2011 came to a close.
He was purpose-driven and only growing as a fighter. Against Johnson, matched for the first time in the speed department, he relied on a strong wrestling game to secure a decision. He was no one-trick pony, dancing around the cage in a confusing, chaotic whirlwind of lanky limbs, part kickboxer and part flamenco artist. Cruz contained multitudes.
Greatness, the goal for so many, had already been achieved. Only athletic immortality remained, the chance to sell fans on the primacy of the little man and finally usurp the more popular Faber as the face of the little man in a big man’s world. As a life’s works go, it was pretty alright.
The only speed Cruz knew was “rapid.” Footwork, punches, words—they all tumbled out of him at incredible speed. It was no surprise, then, that his career would pass before his eyes the same way. In the blink of an eye, it was all over.
After nearly three years of toil and trouble, Cruz will finally put a torn anterior cruciate ligament, two subsequent surgeries, a groin pull and all the lingering doubt and stress to the side to get back to doing what he does best.
It hasn’t been easy.
“It feels weird…it really does,” Cruz told Bleacher Report’s Duane Finley. “I’ve been out for so long, and I’ve turned my brain off to it because I hurt myself because I got back into the gym too soon. I basically had to turn off the mindset of being a pro athlete and change hats.
“But now, I’ve put the hat back on; I’m back to being a professional athlete again. It feels like getting laid off and then getting your job back. It’s a strange feeling, and I’m here and ready to go through with it…”
When Cruz steps into the Octagon against Takeya Mizugaki, no one really knows what kind of fighter he’s going to be. If he’s being honest, Cruz himself has no idea either. Who Cruz is today is a mystery. Who he was is revelation.
Watching Cruz on video only serves to frustrate if you’re looking for labels. He defies them. He’s cerebral and prepared, but he’s also unorthodox and bizarre. But that’s always been the case.
It’s not often you get to use the term “meth head” as a compliment, so I took every advantage of the opportunity the first time I met Dominick Cruz. Then a mere contender, Cruz was at a media breakfast in Las Vegas prior to UFC 104 and months before his WEC bantamweight title win, his first real opportunity to mingle with the gathered MMA press.
When it was my turn to chat him up, I tried to put his fighting style into words, attempting to get him to explain it to me.
“It’s almost like Bruce Lee on meth,” I told him. “You’re darting around like no one else I’ve ever seen.”
Maybe he saw the look in my eye, that passing, fleeting fear that I had gone too far with a man who could easily dismantle me and was sitting perilously close for comfort. He narrowed his eyes briefly before letting out a little laugh and letting me know what he was all about in the cage.
“I always wanted to have a style that would catch someone’s eye. There’s so many good fighters, and you have to stand out some way. My outlook on this is that we’re wearing four-ounce gloves, and four-ounce gloves aren’t very forgiving.
“So my mindset is to get hit as little as possible,” he told me. “…I thought if I don’t get hit at all in a fight, how can I lose? I decided to make my feet as fast as I could and make my footwork ridiculous because Muhammad Ali always preached about it, so it’s got to work.”
It’s a strategy he mastered before injuries finally did what no fighter could—they caught up with him. His striking defense ranks among the very best of all time, according to Fight Metric, his movement and very active offense giving opponents little time to breath, let alone to plot tactics of their own.
Whether he can do the same against Mizugaki will go a long way toward deciding if Cruz’s tale is a tragedy or the midpoint in an epic hero’s journey. A savvy veteran in his own right, the Japanese star is far from a pushover, especially for a fighter so long removed from the cage.
“All he would need to win is to time me one time being lazy with my jab. On top of that, he knows how to win rounds. He’s a veteran who knows where he is within each round,” Cruz told UFC Tonight (via Fox Sports). “…I’m going to be able to keep a fast pace, and with a three-round fight, that’s something you have to do. The pace has to be higher, and it’s that much more important to win each round than in a five-round fight.”
Anticipation, frankly, is hardly at a fever pitch. Each of Cruz’s last four fights went to a judges’ decision. He doesn’t have a single knockout or submission to his name in his nine big league fights. He’s the antithesis of Donald Cerrone and Eddie Alvarez, the high-octane fighters who are getting the attention, while Cruz languishes on the undercard.
But make no mistake—if he’s back to being the Dominick Cruz we came to respect so much over the years, he won’t just be the best fighter on this card. He might just be the best fighter in the entire world.
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