Dominick Cruz, Urijah Faber hurl verbal haymakers at UFC 199 press conference
Bantamweight rivals Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber were forced to do interview after interview together during UFC 199 fight week and things finally came to a head at Thursday's pre-fight press conference, where both fighters did their best to embarrass the other before Saturday's event.
While headliners Michael Bisping and Luke Rockhold were certainly masterful, the bantamweights were intent on stealing the show.
Faber opened the verbal sparring by turning a question about why he feels he should be champion into an answer in which he called Cruz's highlight tape "pitiful."
"If you look at the last fight in 2011 between Dominick and (me), I beat him up, he did not beat me up. It's comical the way this guy talks, it's almost like he became an analyst and only looks at the wins and losses. He put this highlight tape on his Instagram and it was the most pitiful thing I've ever seen in my life ... I would hide that. You wanna see my highlight video? It's me punching him in the face and him hitting the ground. And then him trying to get takedowns that were half-assed takedowns."
Cruz, not one to be outdone, responded by hitting Faber with the cold, hard facts from their previous fights, in true analyst fashion.
"You're going to miss a lot, just like everybody else I fight. He can try to be as tough and as strong as he thinks he is, but he'll miss," Cruz said before Faber interjected and claimed he never misses. "You miss a lot, man. Landing under 30 percent of anything you throw and landing minimal strikes, one at a time, not throwing combinations, not moving forward. You survived that fight by moving backwards."
The pair of top bantamweights originally met in 2007 for a title fight under the WEC banner. Faber won that fight by first-round submission. In the second meeting in 2011, again for the title but ths time in the UFC, Cruz took home a unanimous decision.
The trilogy was put on hold while Cruz dealt with injuries, but that didn't stop the foes from engaging in a vicious war of words over the next five years.
Cruz turned it up another notch at the presser when asked why the rivalry has persisted for so long. He immediately started to dig into Faber's record and his unwillingness to fix his mistakes.
"I think it comes down to basically opposite ways of thinking," Cruz said. "I attack the things and admit the things that I need to fix, he makes excuses for the things he's not good at and needs to fix. Every eight losses that he has, the times he has been knocked out, he's trying to hold his thumb up like he wasn't knocked out or has some excuse for why he lost."
Cruz is referring to Faber's fight against Renan Barao, where he was dropped and took big shots on while down on his hands and knees. Referee Herb Dean asked Faber if he could continue, and Faber replied with a thumbs up. Dean did not see the response and waved the fight off.
"Yea, sorry for trying to show that I'm okay." Faber responded.
Cruz wasn't buying that excuse.
"You're okay with your face dragging off the mat while Barao is knocking you out, that's okay," Cruz said. "While Tyson Griffin knocks you out, while Jose Aldo kicks your leg off. You're not okay in any of those things, man."
With his back against the ropes, Faber returned with an excellent counter punch.
"Dominick, you've fought 21 times, and you haven't fought one of the guys I've lost to, not one," Faber said. "This is comedy, the fact that I've fought twice as much as you around the same amount of time and you keep talking about my losses. You haven't fought one of the guys I've lost to and you go to a decision every time."
Things certainly didn't slow, as Cruz started digging into Faber's relationship with TJ Dillashaw and Cody Garbrandt while the Team Alpha Male leader burned the champ on the fights he won to get the title back.
There were plenty of other jabs (check out the video at the top of this page) and there will probably be more at Friday's weigh-in.
We're seriously considering playing the UFC 199 pre-fight press conference on loop until fight night.
