Dominick Cruz Believes T.J. Dillashaw Posed Greater Challenge Than Henry Cejudo

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Dominick Cruz will return to the Octagon for the first time in nearly four years when he squares off against Henry Cejudo in the UFC 249 co-main event on Saturday night.

Extended layoffs are nothing new for the former bantamweight champion: After defending the title against Demetrious Johnson at UFC Live 6 in October 2011, “The Dominator” didn’t return to active competition until September 2014, when he knocked out Takeya Mizugaki in 61 seconds at UFC 178.

While Cruz has been riddled with injuries over the course of his career, mixed martial arts and training is a way of life for the Alliance MMA standout. With that in mind, numerous rehabs aren’t necessarily the chore they might seem to be. Now, he’s looking forward to experiencing the sensation of fight night once again.

“It’s about making sure that you prepare yourself the right way. I live this life to train,” Cruz said during a media call to promote UFC 249. “When this is all said and done, I’m gonna be in this kind of shape still. I enjoy training, it’s like a livelihood for me. It’s just how I like to live my life, is in shape, feeling good and training hard.

“Transformation is a constant event, so I’m constantly trying to transform in my life. This is the place to do it is on a stage.  This is the stage where transformation happens. Every athlete on this card is putting themselves in a vulnerable position where they can be beaten or win, and what’s the pleasure in winning if there’s no thought of losing? All this comes together to create a lot of fire. I’m excited for it.”

This particular comeback occurs during far different circumstances than the last, as the world has been drastically changed by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. When Cruz faces Cejudo at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida, there will be no fans in attendance, no cheers to welcome the former champion back to the arena.

Cruz will do his best to find some familiarity in a largely unfamiliar environment.

“I think the silence might be the weird part, realistically,” Cruz said. “If you fight in Japan, there’s a lot of people there, but they don’t make a lot of noise. It could be like that. I don’t have a lot of people in the gym, especially now with the quarantine. We’ve all been having to train with minimal people.  We have four to six people max, so nobody gets contaminated. It’s been pretty silent in there.

“I think it’s gonna resemble training in the gym and also similar to ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ We had all the competitors on the team from ‘The Ultimate Fighter’, [but] it was still somewhat eerily quiet. There’s a few different scenarios I’ve been in where it’s gonna resemble this, I believe.”

Cruz wasn’t initially expected to face Cejudo. The Olympic gold medalist and reigning bantamweight champion was booked against Jose Aldo, but visa issues prevented the Brazilian from entering the United States in time to accept the fight. Enter Cruz, who is another target on Cejudo’s current “legacy rampage.” It wasn’t a difficult transition for Cruz to move into fight-camp mode, even on relatively short notice.

“I was already training hard,” he said. “Jeremy Stephens had a fight coming up with Calvin Kattar, and I was helping him train for that about two weeks before this card got slated. I was already training pretty hard with Jeremy, sparring him. Just helping him prepare, doing the same workouts he was doing and making sure he wasn’t having to train alone. That actually led right into this camp. I technically had about a six-week camp for this fight, which happened to be plenty enough to be in shape for five rounds.”

After Cruz bested Mizugaki in his comeback fight in 2014, he was able to briefly reclaim the bantamweight throne with a decision win over T.J. Dillashaw. When considering which championship win might mean more, Cruz still thinks defeating Dillashaw holds more value than a win over Cejudo.

“I think the win over T.J. would mean more because T.J Dillashaw is a true bantamweight, and Henry is still a [125-er,] so realistically this isn’t gonna be as tough of  a fight as T.J., I know that,” Cruz said.

“…I do respect what Henry’s done as a martial artist. You can’t take that away. But I do believe that T.J. is a true 135-er and that Henry is a true 125-er. He’ll go back down to his division after I beat him.”