He was on the sidelines so long that we nearly forgot about him entirely.
Nearly three years passed between Dominick Cruz‘s last two fights. He beat Demetrious Johnson back in 2011 for the second defense of his UFC bantamweight championship, and then he started getting injured. And injured. And injured again. And before we knew it, there were new UFC fans out there who knew Cruz more as a broadcaster than as a fighter.
Many would have given up. Imagine, even as a non-professional athlete, destroying your knee even one time. That’s what happened when Cruz tore his ACL in 2012. He’d coached The Ultimate Fighter and set up a grudge fight with Urijah Faber at UFC 148. It was the most anticipated lighter-weight bout in UFC history. Only Cruz didn’t make it. He was forced to withdraw from the bout two months before it ever happened. He underwent surgery, where doctors replaced his badly frayed ACL with an ACL from a cadaver.
There was no luck for Cruz, even with semi-bionic body parts being fused into his own skeletal structure. His body rejected the cadaver, and Cruz was forced to undergo another surgery that December. Two ACL injuries in less than a year? It should have been enough to steal the soul of a normal man. But Cruz is not a normal man. This, we know.
He was supposed to come back earlier this year and face interim champion Renan Barao, but then Cruz tore his groin. The UFC, having waited patiently but having waited long enough, took his championship from his hands and placed it around Barao‘s waist. Again, this was an opportunity for Cruz to fold up shop. He’d created a nifty career as an analyst, where he excelled at breaking down the intricacies of the fight game and explaining them in easy-to-digest terms. Nobody would have faulted Cruz for sticking on the sidelines. Enough was enough.
But enough was not enough. Not for Cruz. He continued working, never taking his eye off the prize, even as the prize changed hands from Barao to T.J. Dillashaw. His championship, the bantamweight belt he’d never lost, landed in Sacramento, where Cruz has some history. He has a long-standing beef with members of Team Alpha Male, and a potential bout with Dillashaw had success written all over it.
Before he could focus on the championship, Cruz had to return to the Octagon first, to get his sea legs back and prove that he could go through a training camp without injuring himself. He did. He returned at UFC 178, and if you said he looked better than ever, well, you’d be right.
Cruz put a hellacious beating on Takeya Mizugaki. It was noteworthy both in its short, effective violence and because nobody had ever done anything like that to Mizugaki. The Japanese fighter was known as a durable and tough competitor, and Cruz sliced through him like a hot knife through butter. It was breathtaking, and it was the best moment of mixed martial arts in 2014.
We’ve had many great moments this year. Dillashaw beating Barao ranks right up there. But to see a man like Cruz, who has been through so much in the prime of his career, return to the Octagon the way he did? To know that he spent three of the worst years of his life watching from the sidelines, but then returned as a seemingly better fighter?
It’s hard to top that moment as the best of the year. But Cruz has a chance to top himself and take his incredible comeback story to its ultimate conclusion when he faces Dillashaw for the championship he never lost. And if he can accomplish that feat, well, the bantamweight division may finally have the kind of star it needs to connect with fans at home.
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