January 9, 2025 6:00 pm ET
Dominick Cruz views his subsequent combat as his last one.
After a two-plus-year layoff, Cruz (24-4 MMA, 7-3 UFC) returns Feb. 22 vs. Rob Font (21-8 MMA, 11-7 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 252 in Seattle.
The sudden reemergence within the aggressive discipline had many followers questioning if the 39-year-old would grasp up the gloves thereafter. Cruz revealed Thursday throughout an interview with ESPN that, in his thoughts, that’s the case.
“For me, it’s,” Cruz mentioned. “(It’s) not due to my mentality, not due to my skillset. Yeah, I misplaced my final combat, however I used to be in that combat each minute of the combat. After I obtained completed, I used to be going for the kill, which obtained me damage. It wasn’t a type of conditions the place I used to be bowing out of the combat. It was that I used to be within the combat attempting to kill the man, and I damage myself, and that led to the end finally. I checked out that combat. I’m going, ‘OK, don’t be too harsh on your self. That is a part of the sport. You get hit. You get caught. These items occur.’
“However I used to be within the combat. I wasn’t slower. I wasn’t wanting behind a step. I wasn’t not selecting the nice strategies. These are all issues I add to my mindset earlier than shifting into this final 9 months as nicely. The abilities are nonetheless there. It’s only a matter of all of the accidents and stuff. Can I maintain them collectively to get by the camp? The camp is the onerous half. Everyone knows that. It’s not likely the combat.” Cruz, who turns 40 on March 9, has competed as an expert since January 2005. His bout vs. Font shall be his eleventh within the UFC, although a adorned eight-fight tenure in WEC preceded his onboarding into the corporate.
A multi-time UFC bantamweight champion whose profession was riddled with accidents, Cruz will nonetheless go down within the historical past books as one of many best fighters in his division’s historical past. He continues to work as a lead colour commentator on UFC broadcasts.
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