One final fight wasn’t in the cards for Dominick Cruz.
The former two-time UFC bantamweight champion was set to compete in UFC Seattle’s co-main event against Rob Font this Saturday night. Unfortunately, disaster struck in training when a dislocated shoulder led to the final UFC fight cancelation of Cruz’s career.
Cruz, 39, announced his official MMA retirement days after the withdrawal. Still in the early stages of accepting his future outside the Octagon, he spoke about his decision Monday on “The Ariel Helwani Show.”
“I think the hardest part about the whole thing is that other people are bummed out,” Cruz said. “It’s a choice — it’s literally a choice to be happy. And the normal thing [for someone in my position] would be, ‘Oh, I should look and be sad because that’s how it should look for other people.’ That was the first thought: ‘I shouldn’t enjoy my life because I don’t deserve to because I pulled out of this fight.’ But at the end of the day, I’ve got a lot of practice with injuries — unfortunately, but also fortunately — to where that’s always the conversation that comes up first for me.
“I set my goal to get through this fight, and I’ll be honest, I was on borrowed time when I booked this fight, but because of the state of my body leading into that, I was very confident that I could make it, so I booked the fight. Unfortunately, [my] arm gave out — and it had given out before, but this time it was different. It was kind of a basic position, so it [was] completely out. The problem was, when it sits out like that, the pain is just absolutely excruciating, and it wouldn’t go back in. So when they went to move it back in — shout out to the [UFC Performance Institute] trainers, they’re very good — the first time I did it, they were able to slide it right back in within three minutes.
“This time, they lifted me up by a towel on my shoulder and the muscles locked it into place, and so I had to go to the hospital, and that made it a completely different experience. It was out of place for about an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and 30 minutes, just sitting out of socket. And you kind of find Jesus in a time like that, to be honest. It’s just excruciating pain.”
Cruz revealed his injury occurred during grappling training, specifically drills focused on getting up from bottom position. While posturing on his elbow to explode upward, the force sent his shoulder “out the back,” resulting in overwhelming pain and a lengthy recovery process.
Surgery on Cruz’s shoulder may be optional, depending on his MRI result. Ultimately, his arm is still functional without surgery, but the procedure would be more to significantly lower the probability of future dislocations.
As Cruz mentioned, when he initially decided the Font matchup would be his last, he’d already entered the realm of looking out for his health rather than pursuing the UFC’s bantamweight title.
“At the end of the day, when your arm starts turning blue … and you can see that they’re making sure my fingers are still working before they slide it back into place, it’s like, OK, is fighting worth as much as my arm? Because there’s a possibility if I keep this route, the arm just stops working,” Cruz said. “You’re not able to lift it. I can do all this because it’s been about 13 days removed, and it’s back in socket. But because I’m not fighting, that might save my shoulder for the rest of my life. And that’s the big picture. It’s, ‘Do you want your shoulder, or is the money you’re getting paid worth your arm?’
“For me, I’m not getting paid big enough dollars that it’s worth my arm. Maybe if I was making a few million, maybe that might change it. I might’ve gone in there and figured out how to make it work at 50% on one arm and 100% on my other. But with the amount of money I’m getting paid, it wasn’t worth the livelihood of my brain and my body.”
Time on the sideline or away from activity has been the story of Cruz’s illustrious career. He’s had multi-year layoffs, his most famous of which saw him return in 2016 after a single fight in four years to recapture the UFC title.
The all-time great has always been transparent with his emotions but also stubbornly persistent in trying to compete as long as he has with a professional run than first began in 2005. While it’s still settling for Cruz that he’ll never have a fight camp again, he still fully intends to be an active martial artist, because that’s what he’ll always be at his core.
“If you’re going to be honest with yourself, it’s like mourning the loss of somebody when you lose the sport, when you do it as much as I do,” Cruz acknowledged. “But I’m still so involved in the sport.
“I pulled out of this fight so that I could still use my shoulder to train, to train athletes, to work, to still move around and do what I want to do and still stay dangerous. It’s important for me, just as a man, to be dangerous all the time. So I’ll still be very dangerous and that’s the key for me. It’s not about retirement and get fat and get lazy. My brain doesn’t work that way. It’s stay as dangerous as I can — that’s the reason I started this sport and essentially paid to do it.
“Not competing at the highest level — I gave everything I have to it. So at the end of the day, I can kind of surrender to it, let go, and then receive what comes next.”
Cruz’s peers have been overwhelmingly effusive in their praise of the former UFC champion since his retirement. He’s received plenty of kudos for what he accomplished in his 28-fight professional career (24-4), however accepting that praise from fans or fellow fighters has been a process in and of itself.
Cruz admitted he rarely watches his own fights back because of how harsh of a self-critic he can be. He’d rather wait until later in life to venture down memory lane. So regarding his perception and legacy within MMA, he’s doing his best to see it from others’ vantage points.
“The longer you go down the road and the more people you go through that [with], the more I realize it’s not them that I’m looking at. I’m looking at myself through their eyes, and I’m judging myself,” Cruz said. “It has nothing to do with other people. That’s the hardest thing is, I feel like I don’t deserve [this]. I feel like I let people down. I feel like I said I was going to do something, and I didn’t get to follow through and do it. It’s not a fact that that makes me not worth it, that I can’t enjoy my life, that I can’t do all these things. I made that up. And so the hard part is just noticing that those are thoughts that come up for me and that they’re not real.
“Most people just can’t believe I did what I did up until this point. Most people, it’s always like I’m thinking people are thinking bad about me. And really, it could easily go the other way — I’m just thinking bad about myself. So that’s the constant hurdle. When you see other people looking at you, it’s not them looking at you and giving their judgments at me. It’s me giving judgments of myself, and I just assume that that’s what they’re thinking when I look in their eyes. That doesn’t go away until I do my own healing, until I forgive myself.”
In total, Cruz won seven major championship fights in his MMA career, defending either the UFC or WEC bantamweight title on five of those occasions. He former multiple rivalries along the way, the most significant of which unfolded opposite the entire Team Alpha Male gym run by Urijah Faber.
Despite Cruz’s bad blood with his many rivals or past opponents, even names like Faber wished “The Dominator” well in life after his retirement announcement. Among the more surprising responses came from T.J. Dillashaw, who Cruz famously dethroned to start his second UFC title reign.
Dillashaw’s MMA career coincidentally ended similarly to Cruz’s. Also a former two-time titleholder, Dillashaw suffered a shoulder injury ahead of his final title tilt against Aljamain Sterling in 2022. He fought through it, but the injury was severe enough that Dillashaw retired shortly after.
“I’ve gotten a few notes from some big names,” Cruz said. “One of the ones that stood out to me was T.J. Dillshaw actually reached out to me. I was shocked. He gave me a recommendation for a shoulder doctor and said he was looking forward to watching me compete [at UFC Seattle] and was sorry that I couldn’t.
“[Demetrious Johnson also reached out], obviously. Faber obviously. Danny Ricciardo from F1, he recently retired and he kind of shared some of his sentiments of what he was going through. Obviously, I can relate to that because he’s in a very dangerous sport too. I’ve had Theo Von reach out to me, that means a lot. Just people who have been through a lot in their life and continue to keep moving forward, those are the ones that I can resonate with. Not that I can’t resonate with everybody — I can accept and be grateful for all of it. But these are the names that stand out to me as people who really put themselves into the fire on a regular basis in their life. And when they reach out, it shows you that there’s some sort of strand of connectivity that we’re all on. Otherwise, that wouldn’t happen. So that’s refreshing.”
One of the less kind reactions to Cruz’s retirement came from recent rival Henry Cejudo, who expressed a belief that Cruz may not have been properly built to train consistently for an MMA career. Cejudo defeated Cruz in May 2020. Before he retired, that rematch always stuck out on Cruz’s radar.
“It’s his perspective, right? He’s allowed to have whatever interpretation he wants, but where does he prove that?” Cruz asked. “Where does he like have some scientist that says, ‘Oh, this is where he did it wrong.’ I’ve been hearing I’ve been doing things wrong since the beginning of my career.
“So for him to critique injuries after his [own] shoulder injuries and after retiring and then coming back, I think he’s just looking at a microscope of himself. It’s not really me that he’s talking about. He’s just explaining himself again. That’s what Henry does. He’s a projector.”
Cruz’s legacy in MMA is as unique as they come; in a way, his injuries and layoffs enhanced his accomplishments. A championship-level fighter coming back from three ACL tears and a quad tear to earn back the UFC title, as he did, will likely never replicated.
But for Cruz, a fight result isn’t what springs to mind when asked about the pinnacle example of his legacy. Instead? It’s the aftermath of his famous Dillashaw victory that speaks to him.
In a now-famous interview with Uncrowned’s Helwani immediately following that 2016 win, Cruz expressed that the best moment of his life was when he realized: “I didn’t need the belt to be happy.”
“That’s why it’s pinned on the front [of my Instagram], because I was really in the middle of figuring something out on that night,” Cruz reflected. “I was on antidepressants the entire camp before that fight because of just how sad I was. Three weeks before that fight, I got off the antidepressants so I could do what I needed to do. Thank God my coach was able to recognize the difference. Once I got through that fight and then had the title, and felt that it didn’t feel any different before I had it, and if anything, it was like, ‘This is it? After everything I just went through, this is all I get? After everything everybody said that it was impossible and it couldn’t be done, there’s no chance and all this stuff like this, I get this?’
“Everybody thinks the belt, the championship is going to fix everything. It doesn’t. It gives you more money, and then you can live a more comfortable life if you’re lucky. Your problems are not fixed. It’s up to us, and being happy is a choice — and I realized it literally in that moment, when you asked me the question. ‘Is this the happiest day of your life?’ ‘Actually, I don’t feel any different than when I got it. In fact, I’m a little disappointed that this is all I get.’ And so that really hit me hard, and that was a moment that I realized, you know, happiness is a choice. It’s not a fact. You’ve got to work for it.”
Nearly a decade later, Cruz continues to open up and surprise the world with his ideas and tribulations. He had noted in the past how he “got off the couch” to get ready for Dillashaw, but the period was dark because he could not do what he loved most. The aid of antidepressants was unknown until now.
In the end, after nearly 20 years of learning and fighting — both inside and outside the Octagon — Cruz is at peace with the hand he was dealt.
“Fighting brought me back into sobriety, into life, into realizing the joy of life,” Cruz said. “Then after that [Dillashaw win], I kept the ball rolling. I’ve never touched antidepressants again in my life. I’ll never need them again. I’ve learned a lot of different tools from that process as well. So yeah, again, nothing’s perfect. Everything might look perfect on the outside for a lot of us, the strongest people in the world, but we’re all going through hell like anybody else. It’s just, can you get through it?”
