UFC Bantamweight Dominick Cruz eyes January return after series of ailments

It was three days before Christmas when Dominick Cruz made a Facebook post that sounded like he'd had a death in the family.

The former, perhaps future, UFC bantamweight champion was announcing last winter the latest in an almost unbelievable series of ACL tears.

At the end of the post, Cruz wrote, " … I want to thank the UFC, my fans and my sponsors ahead of time for your support and prayers. I appreciate you more than you could understand. I don't have any other facts to share right now. I, along with my camp, respectfully request privacy at this difficult time."

Cruz suffered three ACL tears and a torn groin in the past four years, largely eliminating him from the conversation about the world's greatest fighters.

Nine months following that solemn Facebook post, it's a very different Cruz who is talking about his future. Once again, he's recovered, and this time, there will be no tune-up fight.

On Jan. 17 in Boston, Cruz will challenge T.J. Dillashaw for the title in a card that will be televised nationally by Fox Sports 1. Dillashaw holds the belt that was stripped from Cruz when he couldn't defend it. And he won it doing many of the things that lifted Cruz to stardom.

"He's been trying to reenact what I do for so long that he's picked up a lot of the nuances that are needed in this sport to be successful," Cruz said. "He's understanding movement, he's understanding a high level of offense, cardio, things of that sort."

Cruz will have had one fight under his belt in more than four years by the time he steps into the cage to face Dillashaw in a bid to reclaim the belt he never lost in the ring.

Sixty-one seconds, the time it took Cruz to knock out Takeya Mizugaki at UFC 178 on Sept. 17, 2014, is all the competition he's faced since he was first injured in early 2012.

Cruz was on the verge of superstardom when tore his left anterior cruciate ligament. He was coming off a win over Demetrious Johnson, now the UFC's flyweight champion and the man many now regard as the best fighter in the world, and preparing for a fight with his arch-rival Urijah Faber when he was first injured.

For a fighter who relies so much on footwork, as Cruz does, any leg injury has the potential to be devastating. Treatment of knee injuries such as ACL and MCL tears has improved tremendously in the past quarter of a century, and it doesn't necessarily take away a fighter's athletic ability as it once used to do.

But have no doubt, it changes a person.

"If I'm not different, then what the heck have I been doing?" said Cruz, who became one of the sport's finest television analysts during the time he was sidelined. "I'm different in a more positive way. I had to figure out how to live my life without my livelihood. Take away your skills to interview people and how are you going to make money? Take it away. It's gone today. You no longer have it. What are you going to do? How do you survive and support yourself and your family? That's where I was at."

Cruz said he's better as a fighter now because his television work has enabled him to study the sport in depth and made him understand what works and what doesn't much more.

He's a fascinating figure who hasn't always resonated with the fan base because so little was known about his personal life.

He's 20-1 and is in the midst of an 11-fight winning streak. When he was first injured, he was widely regarded as one of the two or three best fighters in the world.

During his current streak, he's beaten some of the elite fighters in the sport, including two victories over Joseph Benavidez, a win over Johnson and a decision over Faber.

Cruz was hurt the first time while he was coaching on "The Ultimate Fighter Live" preparing for a rubber match with Faber.

Faber used a guillotine to choke out Cruz in a World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight title fight in Las Vegas on March 24, 2007.

Faber was the poster boy of the WEC and was then, as he is now, one of the sport's most popular and charismatic figures.

Cruz would eventually grudgingly earn respect for his prodigious talents, but he never earned the love that is routinely afforded to Faber.

And yet, it was after that defeat to Faber that Cruz came first to realize how good he could truly be.

"I don't talk a lot about this, but the first time I ever felt that I was going to be the best in the world was when I fought Urijah Faber the first time and I lost to him," Cruz said.

Cruz was 21 at the time and working a full-time job to support himself. This is a guy who grew up extremely poor in Tucson, Ariz., who worked long days as a janitor, cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors, to support himself.

He earned the title shot against Faber despite being very much a part-time fighter. Cruz said as he thought about the fight, the differences between his situation and Faber's were clear to him.

"That was the first time I'd ever been to [Las] Vegas," Cruz said of WEC 26, which was held at the Hard Rock Hotel. "I grew up in a trailer. I was broke. I was poor and that was my first big fight against a high level of competition."

Faber was in his 18th fight at the time and had the kind of support system that is now commonplace for professional mixed martial artists.

But in 2007, not everyone could afford to train the way that Faber did. Certainly not Cruz, who got his workouts in when he could between his various jobs.

He emphasized repeatedly that he wasn't making an excuse for his loss to Faber. But as all elite athletes do, he took stock of himself at his low point. He looked at what was right, what was wrong and what he needed to do to scale the mountain.

And he realized that he had the ability to compete at the highest level with a few changes.

"I lost that fight, and this might sound crazy, but that was the first time I ever felt I was going to be the best in the world," Cruz said. "Now, it would be reasonable for you to say, 'Well, you lost. What made you think that?' I knew that Faber had his own gym, his own team, he'd been on top. I knew that [then-WEC general manager] Reed Harris and the WEC loved him and wanted to take care of him and keep the title in his hands for as long as possible.

"I knew everybody believed in him and he had the easy way. I knew I was going to have the hard way. I had nobody promoting me. I had nobody telling anybody I was the best in the world. I had nobody telling anyone, 'Look out for this kid.' I didn't have the push from the media. I didn't have the push from the show, the WEC. I didn't have a push from anybody and nobody believed in me except my coaches."

And as Cruz looked at his situation, he recognized that Faber was preparing himself for competition in an entirely different fashion. He was doing it like a major-league professional athlete would, in a structured, orderly fashion with a coach overseeing his workouts.

Cruz had little of what Faber had and came to believe that if he could get all of that, he'd be more than able to close the gap.

"When I went in there, I'd never had a coach in my life before [current coach] Eric Del Fierro," Cruz said. "I was 9-0 living in Tucson, Ariz., building my own team up. I was also a janitor working three jobs. I left Arizona because I got the fight with Faber and I had an eight-week camp in California for the first time with Eric Del Fierro.

"This was the first time in my career, at 9-0, that I had help, that I had coaching, someone telling me, 'You need to fix this. You need to fix that.' All the rest of the time what I was doing was getting myself in shape, wrestling as much as possible and showing up to fight. Then, finally, I had a coach, I had a pro team and I had an equation to go in with in the fight. I had people who believed in me and I had management. It was all new to me."

They believed in him for a reason, and they still do.

Cruz became convinced he could become the best in the world, and he would go on to claim the WEC bantamweight belt three years later.

He'd put himself into the conversation as the world's best fighter after he beat Johnson, then had to largely sit back and watch as he rehabbed the various injuries.

Even when he fought Faber the first time and had Del Fierro with him, he was still working a 40-hour a week job. Soon, he was free to work full time on MMA and his talent developed.

But the experiences he had in those early days, cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors while hoping to make it as a fighter, are what shaped him.

"Come on, man, doing [that kind of work] created the sense of humility in me that made me great," he said. "Humility is important. It's very important, and it's something I learned through that experience. I was fighting for a world title against who was considered to be one of the best at that time while I was working 40 hours a week. I had to do that because I had bills to pay and fighting wasn't paying them.

"I think I got three grand from that fight with Faber. I got three thousand dollars to show up and three grand to win, but I lost, so I gained three thousand dollars from that fight. … He was better than me that night, and he deserved to win. But I learned from that and my experience and the path I took brought me to where I am today."