He paused ever so briefly, making sure to get his thought across clearly.
“That becomes a prison for you if you hold on to it,” he says, picking up where he left off. “I’m moving forward, growing what I’ve got to grow, step-by-step. Vera is the next fertile ground of creativity and freedom that I get to be in, and we’ll see what I get to build.”
That phrase — “the fertile ground of creativity and freedom” — is how Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra defines uncertainty, which is something Cruz has come to embrace.
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Like many people, he spent years worrying about the past and the future, stressing over things that were ultimately outside of his control.
But in navigating the euphoric highs and crushing lows of a career limited by injuries and watching how various people floated into and out of his life, depending on where he was at in that journey, the thoughtful, reflective bantamweight reached a point where he needed to let go of all of it and embrace the uncertainty of the moment.
“It sounds cheesy, but I have really gotten to a point where I can be unattached to the outcome,” says Cruz, chuckling, because it does, in fact, sound cheesy, even if it’s true. “What generally scares human beings is the unknown — in life, forget about a fight— but if I knew what was going to happen, if you knew what was going to happen every single day, would you even want to live? It would be boring, wouldn’t it? Life would be stale and Groundhog Day and it would suck.
“It would feel safe, which is what naturally we want as humans, because we naturally put ourselves into a state of survival. In fighting, I feel like in my past, I’ve been in a big state of survival, and through all the wins, losses, draws, people going into my life, and out of my life, I’ve really learned that the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.
“If I knew the outcome before this started — if I knew for a fact, 100 percent, no doubt in my mind and the whole world knew 100 percent, no doubt in their minds who was going to win this fight, it wouldn’t be interesting to any of us,” continues Cruz, speaking in the focused tone that has become synonymous with his work as a broadcaster. “The uncertainty is actually what I’m embracing.
