Cruz will control what he can at UFC 132
LAS VEGAS – Dominick Cruz is the best fighter you've never heard of. In competitive terms, he's the mixed martial arts version of boxing sensation Floyd Mayweather Jr. Like Mayweather, Cruz is often so much more physically gifted than his opponents that he makes beating them look simple.
For a long time, Cruz believed that working hard, mining his talent and reeling off a series of wins over top-level competition would garner him recognition and make him a fan and media darling like his archrival, Urijah Faber.
Cruz will defend his Ultimate Fighting Championship bantamweight title against Faber on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the main event of UFC 132. But as Cruz painfully discovered when he met Faber in 2007 when both were competing in the now-defunct World Extreme Cagefighting organization and Faber was its featherweight champion, just being talented alone doesn't guarantee a man a thing.
When Cruz saw the poster promoting WEC 26 in Las Vegas in 2007, he was appalled. He was at the time an unbeaten fighter preparing to challenge Faber for the belt, but his picture was nowhere on the poster promoting ticket sales for the event. Instead, it had photos of Carlos Condit, John Alessio, Eddie Wineland and, most aggravatingly, Faber.
"We were really pushing Urijah at that point and there were some other guys on that show we needed to promote," said former WEC general manager Reed Harris, who is now a UFC vice president and something of a proud papa, watching his old fighters headline a significant UFC card.
In a none-too-subtle protest at what he viewed as an injustice, Cruz slathered his autograph across Faber's face on the poster. That infuriated Faber, who went out and choked out Cruz in just 98 seconds, giving Cruz his first – and only – loss.
Cruz is now 17-1, ranked sixth in the Yahoo! Sports pound-for-pound rankings and is a solid 7-5 favorite to defeat Faber in their grudge match on Saturday and retain his title.
No matter what happens in the cage Saturday, Cruz still has a long way to go to catch up to Faber in terms of notoriety. Faber was the face of the WEC and is already one of the UFC's most popular fighters.
He's in demand for personal appearances and interviews and he's starring in commercials for several big companies. Cruz, by contrast, as well as by his own admission, is as anonymous as a UFC champion can be.
"People just don't know me, man," Cruz said. "Nobody knows who I am. You say people do, but you know because you're in the [MMA] community. I go anywhere and nobody knows who I am. That's why I kind of look at this main event as my coming out party."
The tension between Cruz and Faber that existed after Cruz scrawled his name across Faber's face didn't dissipate after their first bout. If anything, there is more tension between them as they prepare for their rematch.
Faber was able to throw a few well-placed jabs at Cruz when he spoke with the media following an intense workout Wednesday in a ballroom at the MGM Grand. Though the roles are reversed in one way, in which it's Cruz who is now the reigning champion, Faber made clear in the other way that things are much the same.
Fighters get paid by selling tickets, being pay-per-view draws and generally making themselves a household name. There is no better self-promoter in the sport than Faber, who is engaging, accessible and almost rock-star popular with the sport's female fan base.
Even before the WEC was folded into the UFC, Faber was highly visible despite fighting in the far less visible WEC. Prior to his title fight at WEC 48 against Jose Aldo, UFC president Dana White recalled that fans always bothered him about Faber.
"People would always ask me, 'Hey, man, when's that surfer dude fighting again?' " White said, referencing Faber.
Because of Faber's presence at the top of that card, WEC 48 sold well more than double the expected amount of pay-per-views. He remains hugely popular among MMA fans and received a hero's welcome at UFC 128 in March when he made his UFC debut in Newark, N.J., against Wineland.
On Thursday, he managed to tweak Cruz while beaming and sounding sweet and innocent.
"I'm the same guy, and it's the reason I've been at the top of every organization, every weight that I've been in since I started this game, since my third fight," Faber said. "We're two guys who are determined, hungry and want that belt. I don't think about him at all, but I know he's thinking about me a lot."
Cruz, though, is clearly thinking about Faber a lot and he's not ashamed to admit it. He believes he's far superior to Faber in the cage and plans to prove that on Saturday, but he knows he lags behind in recognition, notoriety, endorsements and the like.
There is a small window for fighters to take advantage of the financial opportunities that exist for them and to capitalize on their success in the cage. In that regard, Cruz decided to follow the Faber blueprint.
"The reason why he was the face of the WEC is because he was a self-promoter," Cruz said. "It makes sense. Let's keep it real. If you're an organization, who do you want as your public face? When I first came into the WEC, I was 9-0 but all my fights were in little shows and I didn't really bring fans to the stands. When Faber fought, he brought fans to the stands because of the self-promotion he had done and he had gotten a lot of people helping him out in different areas. He did things right, and I give him credit for that.
"Part of the reason why he gets a lot of recognition and more people are looking to him to win is because they know who he is and they've seen his face, and they recognize it. If people don't know you and don't know what you're about, they're not going to go for you. Half of my fights haven't been on TV. I get it now and for me, it's a matter of getting the exposure and doing things media-wise the correct way."
It doesn't hurt that in the intervening 51 months, Cruz has become one of the elite fighters in the world. He was young and naive in those days, but the Cruz that Faber is going to face on Saturday is a battle-hardened veteran with two wins over the Faber-coached Joseph Benavidez as well as impressive victories over the likes of Brian Bowles and Scott Jorgensen.
Harris said it would be a mistake if anyone thinks the result of the first fight would dictate the outcome of Saturday's match.
"Cruz is not the same fighter he was four years ago," Harris said. "He was kind of green and Faber pretty easily took him down and ended up choking him. Cruz is kind of like (former UFC star) Chuck Liddell in that he has a really good sprawl. He's very quick. He's doing a lot of great things in there and the fighters tell me he uses a lot of weird angles that's tough to figure out. There is no question that Dominick has evolved and is nothing like the guy he was then."
Except he's the same in terms of notoriety. Faber will probably be greeted with a roar on Saturday will Cruz can probably expect to be cascaded in boos when he's introduced.
But a win over Faber in the main event of a high-profile card with big names such as Wanderlei Silva and Tito Ortiz on the undercard can do a lot to help Cruz make a name for himself with the public.
And he's as committed to doing that as he has been to winning and improving his game.
"I'm not complaining about anything that the WEC or the UFC have done when I talk about being under-promoted, because the only person I have to blame for that is myself," Cruz said. "I've learned and I've grown and I know that just as important as fighting and training is promoting myself and marketing myself. And I'm committed to doing that as best I can."
When the world gets to know him, it's going to discover that it was missing out on one of its greatest fighters.
The good thing, from Cruz' standpoint, is that he's still two months shy of his 26th birthday.
"Having this platform that the UFC will give him is going to be good for Dom," Harris predicted. "He's one of the guys (from the WEC) who is going to maybe sneak up on people. Those of us who live this, we've known him for a long time, but this stage is going to give him a chance to show what he's all about."
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