“I’m moving up the ladder, so I picture myself being the vintage me in (World Extreme Cagefighting),” Cruz said. “I’m going to have to pull that guy out against Pedro Munhoz.”
To scoff at this notion is to write off Cruz, which hasn’t aged well historically. Although the mileage rises, so does the number of lessons learned, and to bring up his days under the WEC banner is to call back not only to the start of his championship reign, but also what was his lone defeat for many years: a submission loss to Urijah Faber at WEC 26.
Talking to UFC.com for an episode of Career Retrospective, Cruz said that loss prompted him to “fix” his grappling, which helped him on a historic eight-year unbeaten run. The fight was also the first installment in his trilogy against Faber, which concluded nine years after the first edition with Cruz settling the score at 2-1 in his favor. It’s a chapter in his career Cruz looks at with reverence for what it gave him, despite the annoyances it brought in the moment.
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“That human being that you don’t like becomes the person you have around you the most,” Cruz said. “What you resist persists has never sounded so true. I really resisted that guy, and so he continued to persistently be in my face until I got him out of there. I learned a lot. He elevated me to another level so, in the end, I’m grateful that I had that with him. To this day, I got a little bit of Faber in my style because my guillotine defense is top-notch, and I understand how to do this media-game thing.”
