Dominick Cruz believes the UFC is gearing up for something big. The former UFC bantamweight champion spoke to ESPN during UFC 229 fight week. The 33-year-old hasn’t fought since December of 2016. He suffered his first loss in almost 10 years against Cody Garbrandt. “No Love” defeated Cruz via unanimous decision for the 135-pound title.
Currently, the title lies in the hands of Cruz’s longtime rival, TJ Dillashaw. Dillashaw picked up back-to-back wins over Garbrandt to win and retain the bantamweight throne. Now, the UFC is attempting to book a super fight between Dillashaw and 125-pound champ Henry Cejudo. When asked about this, Cruz said he’d love the opportunity to fight Cejudo for the 125-pound belt.
However, he believes the UFC making this fight is the first step in closing down the men’s flyweight division:
“I’d love to fight him (Henry Cejudo), but I think what’s happening – the fact that they’re trying to make a fight with Cejudo tells me one thing,” Cruz said. “It’s a guess, but, they have to be shutting down the 125-pound division. Why would you make a fight with Cejudo to come up? That will legitimately kill the 125-pound division in itself.
“Letting him come up to 135 and possibly win the title. So, they got to be setting up to kill that division. That’s the only thing I can think of and that’s the only reason they would move me out of the way, and try and move Cejudo up. Because now you have to make a case for other ’25ers as they move up.
“Because I created the 125-pound division. I beat up so many of them they made another division. For the smaller, shorter, lighter guys. And now those guys are going to come back up because they weren’t generating the views. They weren’t generating the butts in the seats. They weren’t doing anything with the division to grow it.
“So now they’re saying, ‘Okay, maybe we’ll try killing it. Let’s see how Henry does with TJ, let’s see if we can bring this division and make it viable that these guys can fight with the ’35ers.’
“That’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense, why you would not put me in there in that title fight against TJ, and why you would put Henry before. Because you have to build that whole 25 division, and bring us together in 35s. Which, I have not problem with, and I’ll fight somebody in the meantime.”
Do you think the UFC will shut down the men’s 125-pound division?
