Dominick Cruz was originally slated to face John Lineker at UFC 233, but the injury bug struck Dominick Cruz yet again, forcing him to withdraw from the fight. In an appearance on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Monday, Cruz revealed that he had suffered a shoulder injury during sparring the day he signed the bout agreement with John Lineker and that he will be going in for surgery in 2019. As someone who has been sidelined many times throughout his illustrious career, this is not a new experience for Cruz, but the pain still cuts as fresh as if it was the first time:

“How I feel is sadness…extreme sadness, to be honest,” Cruz said. “It hurts. I mean, I want to cry.”

But if you think that Dominick Cruz was about to throw a pity party, you couldn’t be more wrong. Dominick Cruz is aware of the path that is before him, and he is not running away from it:

“But I also know this is a long road I’ve had already. I’ve already been down this. I’ve had these injuries. And you can attach whatever you want to this situation, but it never defeats me, and it never will. It’s just part of my journey, and it’s going to be part of my legacy, these injuries. And how many people go through life with problems and have to just…they get dropped and they have to get back up…dropped, and they get back up. That’s really all it is. Life is no different from fighting, and that’s why I love fighting so much.”

With Dominick Cruz on the shelf once again, many fans believe that it’s time for him to retire and leave behind what is already a Hall of Fame career. Cruz, on the other hand, has other ideas, and he would consider such a decision to be tantamount to an individual giving up on life, which is something someone with the resolve of Dominick Cruz cannot identify with:

“You never get to quit in life. So if you quit in sports, exactly when you quit in sports is exactly when you would quit at life. And I never get the option to quit at life. So this is never a defeating thing. It’s a place where you’ve got to sit, you’ve got to connect with your support system, and you’ve got to make your commitments, and you’ve got to decide and declare what you want for yourself moving forward from the current situation.”

“My path, and my journey, and my legacy is going to be combined with the struggles of everyday people. That’s what my legacy is going to show. It’s going to show that I had as many downfalls as anybody else who isn’t a professional athlete.”