VIDEO | Dominick Cruz believes UFC might be shutting down 125-pound division that he ‘created’

“TJ Dillashaw…I don’t know when the champion is gonna try to defend the belt. I mean, he’s fought one time this year so hopefully, he gets in there before the end of the year for the second time, he has no injuries. So I’d love to see him in there, you know?

I would love to fight him but I think what’s happening – the fact that they’re trying to make a fight with [Henry] Cejudo tells me one thing. And it’s a guess but, they have to to be shutting down the [1]25-pound division. Why would you make a fight with Cejudo to come up? That legitimately will kill the ’25-pound division in itself letting him move up to [1]35 [pounds] and possibly win the title so…they gotta be setting up to kill that division. That’s the only thing I can think of and that’s why they would move me out of the way and try to move Cejudo up.

Because now you gotta make a case for other ’25ers as they move up because I created the ’25 pound division. I beat up so many of them [that] they made another division. And now those guys are gonna 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 you put Henry before.”

It’s been a while since we last saw the former bantamweight king Dominick Cruz competing inside the Octagon. But he’s hoping to be back before 2019.

With that said, a lot has changed since Cruz’ last fight which took place late in December 2016 in the first loss of his UFC career to Cody Garbrandt.

Since then the man who defeated him has suffered two knockout defeats to the man that Cruz reclaimed his title against at the beginning of 2016 in TJ Dillashaw. In the division below Cruz, one of the greatest fighters and champions of all time, former flyweight king Demetrious Johnson was unexpectedly dethroned in his rematch with Henry Cejudo.

Immediately after Cejudo won the title over Johnson, he let it be known that he was interested in becoming a double champ which would mean taking out the current bantamweight champ Dillashaw. And seeing how that fight now seems to be in the UFC’s discussions for future fights, it has led Cruz to his theory.

For Cruz though, he just wants to get back in there and will fight someone else if he has to wait for his next crack at Dillashaw.

“I’ll fight somebody in the meantime but let me get on a card near him so that TJ can’t dodge me and try to wait until I fight then wait four months then say, ‘Oh I don’t need to fight Dom,’

I know he’s not scared of me but he doesn’t want to fight me either. And I think it’s just because of the person that I am. He just doesn’t like how I embarrassed him last time sometimes and a lot of the things that I said. I don’t think he wants to go through that again so he’d rather go with someone who’s gonna talk nice about him and give him compliments.”

on 10/5/2018