Former UFC and WEC champ Dominick Cruz is considered one of the greatest bantamweights in history. However, despite his victories, the fighter still has one bout he regrets, his bantamweight title fight against Henry Cejudo.
The UFC 249 fight took place in Jacksonville, where Cruz faced then-bantamweight champion Cejudo. The fight ended in a TKO win for Cejudo, but Cruz blamed the referee, Keith Peterson, for an early stoppage.
Cruz revisited the incident during a lengthy conversation with Demetrious Johnson on the MightyCast, and time has not softened his stance.
“That one got away and [Cejudo is] kind of one of the people I’ve been alluding to [that I want to rematch], the way that that fight went,” Cruz said. “I’m on my feet. I’m up. I’m not trying to, I’m up and there’s one second left on the clock and ‘All-Nonsense’ Keith Peterson is a complete f*ck-up for that.
“It’s the only sporting event in the world going on, there’s one second left on the clock, I’m on my feet, I did my job as a fighter, and he failed as a referee. A complete failure. On multiple occasions, he’s kept doing it.”
“Yes, that fight got away from me, and it taught me that, yes, I got hit, I shouldn’t have got clipped,” Cruz said. “A hundred per cent, I took responsibility for that, and I told Keith Peterson that. Yes, I shouldn’t have gotten clipped and got dropped, OK. I get dropped almost every fight, get back up, and whoop your ass after that. I knew this was going to be part of it.
” I knew the first three rounds were going to be a war with Henry, he’s not a chump, but I knew after that was [my time], and he knew that too. So there’s a game we’re playing, so you’ve got to let me play the game, and Keith Peterson took that opportunity away from me. Took half my check from me because he wanted to look at Henry and listen to Henry, ‘Stop it, I’m hurting him.’
“Dude, you are a weakling. You’re a weak human for that. So get your life together and then come back and get in and ref. That is a fight that got away from me. This isn’t a little fight that you messed up. This is my entire life’s work, so I don’t take it lightly.”
During the pre-fight briefing between officials and fighters, Cruz said he was already sceptical of Peterson’s behaviour and had little confidence in the referee before making his walk to the Octagon. After the fight, he claimed Peterson smelled like “alcohol and cigarettes” and believed this impeded his judgment.
“I spoke to him in the back before that fight,” Cruz said. “I made him restart the entire, you know how the refs come in the back… he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. He was, like, all over the place. My coaches, nobody will talk about it, but they can confirm that I made him start the entire process over. I made the referee go back and restart.
“Hey, look me in the eyes when you talk to me, I want to make sure we’re here and we understand each other. Do not stop this fight. It’s going to be a war. I already know the first three rounds, I might get dropped, I might have to get back up, and it’s OK.’ And I told him that, and what happened? That’s why I was so mad. I had this conversation, and he wouldn’t look me in the eyes, and something was fishy about this dude in the back, and that’s what nobody knows about the whole story.”
His loss to Cejudo led Cruz to stay longer in the sport, hoping to redeem himself. Unfortunately, he hit a wall after suffering a torn ACL for the third time and couldn’t continue. Before his injury, Cruz endured back-to-back defeats after losing to Cody Garbrandt. Many, including Cruz himself, believe he would have ended his career on a high note had he retired after his win over TJ Dillashaw. Still, Cruz said he felt he had unfinished business inside the cage.
“I could have retired in [2016] after winning the title from TJ,” Cruz said on Demetrious Johnson’s YouTube channel. “Walked away. Done. And that would have been perfectly okay,” Cruz said of retirement. “Why didn’t I?”
Cruz continued: “I’ll tell you, because the challenge wasn’t over to keep transforming, to keep learning until I get these losses, and I did…Now what can I learn from these losses? Then, I learned more from that than I did any [of my wins],” said Cruz.
