After reclaiming the title he had never technically lost at last month’s UFC Fight Night 81, reigning UFC bantamweight champion Dominick “The Dominator” Cruz appears to be headed for a trilogy bout with bitter rival Urijah Faber. This fight was originally set to take place at UFC 148 in 2012, but one of Cruz’s many
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After reclaiming the title he had never technically lost at last month’s UFC Fight Night 81, reigning UFC bantamweight champion Dominick “The Dominator” Cruz appears to be headed for a trilogy bout with bitter rival Urijah Faber.
This fight was originally set to take place at UFC 148 in 2012, but one of Cruz’s many injuries forced it to be scrapped. Now with “The Dominator” back at the helm and Faber ranked at No. 3, it seems like a perfect time to finally settle the score.
With Faber scoring a submission in the first meeting in 2007, and Cruz winning a decision in 2011, a rubber match is necessary, and the champion admits that he likes the idea of it.
“The California Kid”, although highly successful throughout his lengthy career, has come up short in all three of his UFC title shots, and Cruz feels as if he has been gifted shots at gold:
“I like that Faber matchup because we were supposed to fight but it got put off because of my knee injury, so I feel like that could happen,” Cruz told MMAjunkie. “It’s been 10 years of building with this guy, and I just kind of want to shut him down and keep him out of the division after this. He really isn’t the most relevant guy in the world, but he still does a pretty good fight. He brings some things to the table. He’s still got a championship mindset.
“I think this is just another gift for Faber. He’s been gifted his whole career with title shots, but oh well. Screw it. I’m all he’s got left, so I might as well give him one more.”
After having only competed once over the course of four years prior to his recent fight with TJ Dillashaw, Cruz worried the masses when he appeared to have injured his foot upon his return. “The Dominator” assured that the injury was not too serious, however, also saying that he’s been rehabbing it and will be back to normal soon:
“I wasn’t really banged up (after the fight), just my foot hurt,” Cruz said. “Of course it’s going to hurt worse at the end of the fight, especially because where we fought they didn’t let us tape stuff. If you go across the world in any sport anywhere, you can tape your ankles or your hands or your knees. Well in a fistfight, apparently you’re not allowed to, so it’s super silly. That really hurt my foot very badly because I was taping it the entire camp, so I was used to having that support. If you take away that support and have to fight at a thousand miles an hour, my foot gets hurt a little bit.
“I’m attacking it very aggressively in rehab, doing the things I need to do to get rid of the inflammation, and my body’s feeling strong. My knees are feeling strong. It’s just a matter of upkeep, staying strong, getting faster and rebuilding the body to get to top form because my last camp I came in off ACL injury and I had to skip a lot of portions of building my body because I had to focus on technique for the fight itself. … Now I can build all those things back up around all this time and have a full body going into this next fight.”
Although no date, location or official announcement has been reported just yet, Cruz seems to be on a beeline to a third bout with Faber, arguably the biggest fight that the division has to offer.
Who do you see coming out on top if and when these two clash?
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