There was never a doubt that TJ Dillashaw and Dominick Cruz would detest each other. That was sealed when Dillashaw first joined Team Alpha Male⏤Cruz's sworn rival⏤and cemented when Dillashaw took over the bantamweight division in Cruz's lengthy absence.
Enmity was always guaranteed. Their conflict manifesting itself in a fight was not.
Cruz simply could not stay healthy. He could only watch from the sidelines as his body repeatedly betrayed him.
From his perch as a Fox Sports 1 UFC analyst, he witnessed Dillashaw's progression from Ultimate Fighter loser to knockout artist to movement maestro to champion, in effect stealing both Cruz's gimmick and division from beneath his damaged legs.
After at least four surgeries and only 61 seconds of action in the last 51 months, Cruz (20-1) has a chance to take it all back. The title, the prestige, the bragging rights that go along with being No. 1. With a win, he can recapture everything he left behind as if he passed through a wormhole.
According to Odds Shark, the odds are against him. The game has evolved. Not a single fighter who held a UFC belt at the time Cruz last held gold in Oct. 2011 still has it.
During that stretch of time, Dillashaw has conducted the entirety of his UFC career: 10 fights, eight wins and a title reign.
"Yeah, he's definitely a very, very tough challenge. He's a great fighter. You have to believe that going into this fight," Dillashaw (13-2) said during a recent media conference call. "You can’t underestimate the guy just because he's been out as well. He was on top for a reason and he’s great. I just feel that I continue to grow past his status. I do believe that I am the better fighter from watching from the beginning and watching myself. I believe I have the better skills and I’m a little bit hungrier, and it’s going to be a great fight."
Maybe.
The fact is, no one really knows what to expect from Cruz, largely due to the physical limitations he's suffered through in recent years. With a game largely dependent on dynamic footwork and speed, have time and injury robbed him of his key attributes?
He showed a glimpse of brilliance in his only bout during that stretch, an emphatic knockout win over Takeya Mizugaki in Sept. 2014.
But it was just that—a glimpse—and shortly afterward, he suffered yet another in a string of knee injuries that led us here.
"I’m a competitive guy by nature so obviously I wanted to be in there competing but couldn’t, so I did what I could around it and I evolved as a person outside of the ring and got better at the things I could as a man outside of the ring," he said during a recent media call. "I didn’t lose or waste any of those years."
That's an awfully pragmatic, admirable stance on adversity, but that's also an awful lot of "outside of the ring" time.
And ring time might be the difference, as my colleague Patrick Wyman argued in explaining the generational shift that has occurred between Cruz's heyday and Dillashaw's current reign:
The differences between the two fighters show how much MMA has changed in the last four years. In 2011, transitional geniuses like Georges St-Pierre and Cruz ruled their divisions, and now the reactive double-leg and knee on the clinch break are standard practice.
We used to be wowed by Cruz's output and cardio. Not only has Dillashaw taken it a step further; light heavyweights such as Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones now routinely land at a higher rate than the former bantamweight titleholder.
According to FightMetric, Dillashaw lands an average of 5.81 strikes per minute, and his strike differential is plus-3.18 per minute. Both of those place him in the top five in UFC history among all divisions. By comparison, Cruz lands 3.4 strikes per minute, and his strike differential is plus-1.53 per minute.
Essentially, what Cruz began, Dillashaw has mastered.
Still, the original is not likely to go quietly. In his work as an analyst, he has wowed audiences with his sharp insights and observations, often focusing on the minutiae of the fight that are frequently the difference between victory and defeat.
Through his work in and out of the cage, he has proved that his fight IQ is beyond reproach. With that track record, it's safe to assume that he understands what he is up against and is likely to apply those critical thinking skills to his own preparation.
Could the man who changed the game once change it again? After all, Cruz has had a lot of time to observe, adjust or transform altogether.
He has certainly done what he could to get in Dillashaw's head, calling him a "meathead," a "fake," questioning his intelligence and pegging him as a "wannabe" for copying his style. His verbal barrage actually got Dillashaw to basically shut down during a joint interview.
In the end, though, the egos and the eras don't matter much. Despite Cruz's long stretches of inactivity, he's still only 30 years old, just a year older than Dillashaw.
His last fight proved he can overcome a long layoff, but its brevity also left questions.
What happens if the fight goes long? What happens if his speed and movement are compromised? What happens if the game caught up to him, or worse, surpassed him?
At its best, mixed martial arts works on the levels of both surface and subplot. Dillashaw vs. Cruz has both of them.
In some ways, this is a territorial dispute with two legitimate claims. The ol' gunslinger is back in town to collect what is rightfully his, but the gold rush has transformed everything around him. Now the man who took it all is moving to meet him, face to face, unbowed and defiant.
Who will blink first? High noon is coming.
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