It’s hard to not be a nail when you’re facing two or three guys. “You can try and prepare the best you can, but if you’re the nail in there, do you have the rounds in to not get finished? Because I’ve been the nail in practice when you’re facing two, three guys in a five-round session. My body went into complete autopilot, for sure - but that’s why, for me, it’s so important to get the sparring rounds in, because you’re not always the hammer.

“Everything else, I was there,” Cruz said. “The Dominator” lived up to his namesake and went on to dominate the final 10 minutes of the bout to pull off the unanimous decision win and cap his comeback year with a 2-0 record in 2021. I received no punches in that entire moment in time, in my own head.”Ĭruz said he remembered everything that followed his impromptu wake-up moment while he was in on his single-leg takedown - and he was fortunate for that.

It’s like that moment in time never existed. So I’m on a single-leg and then I’m going down and doesn’t exist. So in my head, I hit the fence to a single-leg. And then I guess he hit me there, and now that I’ve seen the film, he hit me with a hook again when I leaned against the fence, and that kind of buckled me a little to a single. OH MY GOODNESS How'd he survive?! #UFC269 /9lJGtj2jEb- UFC December 12, 2021 So I just thought my balance was off from the scuffle. To be honest, when I was in the fight and that happened, the only things that I saw was, we got into a scuffle and I missed a punch from my pivot in, and then when I missed the punch, I got back up, and the scramble had my balance off.

“When I’m in the fight, you’re just in the fight. And I didn’t know that happened,” Cruz admitted on The MMA Hour. “You can’t be completely happy when you get dropped, ever. Speaking this week on The MMA Hour, the former UFC bantamweight champion revealed that he lost time in the octagon for the 10-second span that began with him being dropped by a hard left hook from Munhoz and ended with him stumbling again into a desperation single-leg takedown as a result of another powerful left hook from the Brazilian contender. Dominick Cruz had one of his best performances in years at UFC 269 when he won a come-from-behind battle over Pedro Munhoz after being dropped in the opening round.Įven if Cruz doesn’t exactly remember it.

Dominick cruz 269