Former two-time Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz returns to action after another two-year layoff next month (Sat., Feb. 22, 2025) in the co-main event of UFC Seattle against No. 9 ranked Rob Font.
Today (Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025), during an interview with Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen on their ESPN+ show, Cruz announced it would be his last UFC fight after teasing it for a few months.
Dominick Cruz (24-4) hasn’t fought since August of 2022 when he suffered a KO loss to Marlon Vera. Before that, Cruz had back-to-back wins over Pedro Munhoz and Casey Kenney.
Rob Font (21-8) returned to the win column with a decision win over Kyler Phillips. Before that, he suffered back-to-back decision losses to Rob Font and Cory Sandhagen. Font is 11-7 in the UFC with notable wins over Cody Garbrandt, Marlon Moraes, Ricky Simon, and Sergio Pettis among others.
Whether or not the UFC will look to rebook this fight or keep Font on the card is to be seen. But, Dominick Cruz did say before the fight that this would likely be his retirement bout.
“For me, it is,” Cruz said on ESPN when asked if he thinks this will be his last fight. “(It’s) not because of my mentality, not because of my skillset. Yeah, I lost my last fight, but I was in that fight every minute of the fight. When I got finished, I was going for the kill, which got me hurt. It wasn’t one of those situations where I was bowing out of the fight. It was that I was in the fight trying to kill the guy, and I hurt myself, and that led to the finish eventually.”
Cruz is the former UFC bantamweight champion.
Cruz, 39, was set to retire at UFC Seattle after a legendary career that saw him capture (and defend) UFC’s Bantamweight belt twice after vacating his title because of a torn groin. Unfortunately for “The Dominator,” injuries have plagued his illustrious career — he has had to endure two separate multi-year layoffs.
It is currently unknown if Cruz will try to schedule a final fight for later or if he will stop actively competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) and continue to be a way better UFC broadcaster than Daniel Cormier.
out of his out of retirement fight
hmm
probably for the best
He’s
To the surprise of absolutely no one
Yep, retired