TMZSports.com
Former UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz hasn’t tapped out of his career just yet … as the future Hall of Famer tells TMZ Sports he wants to put on the gloves one last time and step back into the UFC Octagon.
We caught up with 39-year-old Cruz, who is currently in Mexico City at the UFC Performance Institute, and he said he is in the process of “building myself up” for a bout.
“I’ll tell you, I think I got a last dance,” he said. “I want one last dance in me. Just go out there and have fun. And when I say fun, I mean fight to the bitter death and see what I have in me.”
It would mark the first time he has been in the Octagon since 2022 … which he lost via fourth-round KO to Marlon Vera.
In an ideal world, the former champ said he would have taken a fight this year — but now says early 2025 is “what’s going to work and line up.”
“I wanted to get after it this year,” he said. “But it’s not looking like a matchup is getting negotiated exactly the way it is. There’s some guys out there who looked really good; that whole division is stacked.”
Cruz is 24-4 in his career … with wins over big names like Urijah Faber, T.J. Dillashaw, Demetrious Johnson and more — and he’s looking to add one more win before riding off into the sunset.