Dominick Cruz has battled back from many injuries throughout his career, but the 39-year-old former UFC bantamweight champion came to the realization that it was time to retire after suffering two shoulder dislocations in a relatively short space of time.
“I had one dislocation about eight weeks prior to this recent one that I posted,” Cruz said on his podcast with Jon Anik. “That one kind of set the stage that, ‘OK, I’m on a different kind of timeline than just age,’ which I didn’t really add to the equation. It was more, just like I feel good, I’m still fast, all these things, right? Then, your shoulder falls out.
“I rehabbed it for six weeks straight, then I went and sparred with Jeremy Stephens and a few pro boxers just to see where it was really at after the rehab I had done, and I did really well. I felt really good, nothing messed with me at all. After that, I booked the fight, and they offered me Rob Font.”
Cruz accepted the fight, but even at that stage he acknowledges that he knew he didn’t have much time left in the sport.
“I knew I was on borrowed time, to put it quickly. I was on borrowed time after the first dislocation,” Cruz said.
Unfortunately for Cruz the time he had left was even shorter than he realized as when he got back into training he quickly suffered another shoulder dislocation, and this time it was far worse that the previous one, causing him the kind of excrutiating pain that led him to the conclusion that it was time to hang up his gloves.
“It was a 20 on a scale of one to 10,” Cruz said of the pain. “It just changed my perspective of where the shoulder is at because – you know, I already had tendon damage that had torn, and that’s why the shoulder starts coming out because the tendons are no longer connected. So, there’s separation and that thing can just fly out. So, if it can happen twice in six to eight months, that’s when the shoulder just stops working on you.
“… How much is my shoulder worth? How much is being able to (raise my arm above my head) worth? That’s full range of motion. It’s still painful, I have a lot of rehab to do, but is that worth more than what I’m getting paid for this last fight? Definitely. Now, if they offered me a couple mil or something like that, I don’t know, I might have showed up and gone with a 50 percent arm and maybe done that. You gotta figure out what your arm’s worth.”
Cruz wouldn’t have had to look far to see how badly things could go wrong with this particular injury as another former 135lb champion and ex-opponent TJ Dillashaw (whose on striking style was inspired by Cruz) decided to take a comeback title fight in 2022 despite repeated shoulder dislocation issues, and had to endure it popping in and out multiple times during the subsequent fight against Aljamain Sterling, which he convincingly lost by TKO.
The 39-year-old Dillashaw had to retire as a result of the injury, and despite multiple surgeries since remains unable to lift his arm above his head.
