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Dominick Cruz may have had doubts about retiring, but his body eventually made the decision for him.
The two-time UFC bantamweight champion and future Hall of Fame inductee recently called it a career, signaling the end of an incredible 20-year that was beset by injuries in its latter stages. Cruz’s announcement forced him out of a potential retirement bout against Rob Font, which was to take place at UFC Seattle on Feb. 22.
He appeared on The Anik & Florian Podcast to detail the events leading up to his decision.
“I had one dislocation about eight weeks prior to this recent one that I posted and that one kind of set the stage that I’m on a different kind of timeline than just age, which I didn’t really add to the equation,” Cruz said. “It was more just like I feel good, I’m still fast, all these things. So then your shoulder falls out and then you’re like, OK, I rehabbed it for six weeks straight and then I went and sparred with Jeremy Stephens and a few other pro boxers just to see where it was really at after the rehab I had done and I did really well, I felt really good, nothing messed with me at all.
“After that I booked the fight and then they offered me Rob Font, so that’s why I was like, ‘I should just take it. I’m not going to get in better shape, I feel amazing still now.’ I felt amazing before the second dislocation and that’s why I took the fight. So, sorry Rob Font as well, I respect the guy. He’s done a lot in the sport himself and done a lot of big things, so nobody wants to pull out as a pro fighter because it sets somebody else off, too. It sets the fans off, it sets the fighter off, it’s more than just me when you pull out and that’s why I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I was on borrowed time, to put it quickly.”
Cruz intended to modify his training for the Font fight to ease the stress on his body and reduce the chance of injuring his shoulder again. Despite taking precautions, Cruz still ended up getting injured while drilling a familiar wrestling technique.
“It was a basic thing I’ve done a million times,” Cruz said. “You’re on your back from half guard, you get up on your elbow, and then you reach to a single and you use your elbow to get up. And when you post on the ground like that with somebody on top of your head, it just pretty much shot out the back the second I put my elbow down and went to pull in that single leg. The difference with this one from the first one was the first one was only out for maybe three minutes, it was a nice quick slide back in… that was excruciating pain, but it was so quick.
“Whereas this second one, they went to pull it in and it did not go back, it just stayed where it was at and all the muscles locked down on top of the nerve and for about an hour and a half, from driving through traffic to the hospital, to getting to the hospital and then needing to get an X-ray-because it’s not like the movies where you just slide a shoulder back in every time, it doesn’t always work that way-so the second time it didn’t work that way.
According to Cruz, his arm actually took on a sickly color as he waited to be attended to.
“When they went to slide it in, it was sitting very particularly, so they had to do an X-ray to see how to pull it back in, what direction to yank your arm when they reset it, because if you pinch certain nerves then it can shut the whole arm off and it’s just really damaging,” Cruz said. “So I’m in the hospital for an hour and 15 minutes, my arm starts turning blue and when I see my fingers turning blue and just things being weird and the pain was excruciating, it just gave a different perspective for me.
“I always say I deserve this kind of pain and the reason is because that’s the only way I learn, so this was enough pain to teach me something and get me to kind of say, OK. … This one, it was a 20 on a scale of 1-10, so it just changed my perspective of where the shoulder’s at because I’d already had tendon damage that had torn and that’s why the shoulder starts coming out because the tendons are no longer connected, so there’s separation and that thing can just fly out. So if it can happen twice within six-to-eight months, that’s when the shoulder just starts working on you after a while if you start learning about the anatomy of the shoulder, which I have at this point.”
Cruz, who turns 40 in March, made the call to preserve his long-term health over chasing a storybook ending to his career. Had he fought Font and won, it would have given him 25 pro wins, a tidy number to cap off an illustrious run as arguably the best bantamweight of all time.
He admits he would have considered making the trip to Seattle to fight if the price was right, but the math didn’t add up.
“It’s still painful, I have a lot of rehab to do, but is that worth more than what I’m getting paid for this last fight? Definitely,” Cruz said. “Now, if they offer me a couple of mil or something, I don’t know, I might have showed up, and gone with a 50 percent arm and maybe done that, but you’ve got to figure out what your arm’s worth.”
Cruz isn’t sure he plans to become a full-time coach, though his recent work with up-and-coming prospects has encouraged him to consider sticking around at the gym to tutor the next generation of fighters.
“I’ve been doing that out here in Mexico City,” Cruz said. “It really bridged me really well being out here with Eric Del Fierro, who’s running this squad out here. There’s 25 South American fighters and they’re trying to get as many Mexican fighters as they can and training with them over the past year, I’ve learned so much from the young guys, just the hunger in their eyes and how bad they want it, and I can see my young self in them.
“It’s inspiring for me. I realize being here this last year, seeing guys like that keeps me alive. It just keeps me alive, so I’ll be part of that, no question.”
