Dominick Cruz explains why latest shoulder injury prompted retirement: 'I was on borrowed time'

USA Today

11-02-2025

Former UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz felt his career was 'on borrowed time' as he dealt with a recurring shoulder issue.
The injury bug has haunted Cruz (24-4 MMA, 7-3 UFC), affecting multiple areas of his body, leading to many starts and stops over his professional MMA career that began in 2005. Even though he was dealing with a shoulder issue, Cruz decided to book a fight for Feb. 22 against Rob Font, which would have been his first since a loss to Marlon Vera in August 2022.
However, his body wouldn't allow him to complete a full camp, even with adjusting the intensity, and decided to withdraw from the fight and call it a career.
'I had one dislocation about eight weeks prior to this recent one that I posted,' Cruz said on 'The Anik & Florian Podcast.' '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 admits there was some hesitation in booking the fight, but he felt his body would get in no better shape than it was at that time. Unfortunately, his shoulder failed him again.
'Sorry, Rob Font as well,' Cruz said. 'I respect the guy. He's done a lot in the sport himself and a lot of big things. So, nobody wants to pull out as a pro fighter because it sets somebody else off, too. It sets the fans off, it sets the fighter off; it's more than just me when you pull out, and that's why I didn't want to do it. But I knew I was on borred time, to put it quickly. I was on borrowed time after the first dislocation.'
In order to reduce the liklihood of damaging his shoulder again, Cruz said he changed up his training camp routine to dial back live sparring and grappling. However, when he went live, the injury occured, and it wasn't a dislocation that could be quickly popped back into place like the previous occurance. Cruz said he had to go to the hospital to get X-rays done so the medical team could figure out which way to pull his arm to reset it.
According to Cruz, this disclocation was so excrutiaingly painful that it prompted him to reasses his career, and think about what day-to-day life could be like years from now if he pressed forward.
'It was a 20 on a scale of one to 10,' Cruz said. '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.'