Dominick Cruz expected to miss an entire year following surgery, insists he’s still the greatest of all time

Good thing those extended layoffs save brain cells or they might be good for nothing.

Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bantamweight champion, Dominick Cruz, has once again been forced to the sidelines after suffering a debilitating injury in training camp, one severe enough to leave him sidelined for an entire year.

So what the f—k happened?

“My subscapularis is completely torn off and my supraspinatus is 75 percent torn off,” Cruz told The Ariel Helwani MMA Show. “So from what I understand, they have to take the tendon and reattach it with a screw of some sort into the bone to get everything reconnected. . . It’s basically an ACL [tear] of the shoulder.”

Cruz was scheduled to face John Lineker at the since-canceled UFC 233 pay-per-view (PPV) event, previously scheduled for Jan. 26, 2019 inside Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., one of many mishaps that left Bellator unopposed in “The Golden State.”

Join us in making sad faces with “The Dominator.”

“With all that being said, how I feel is sadness, Cruz said. “Extreme sadness, to be honest. It hurts. I want to cry. But I also know that this is a long road that I’ve had already. You can attack whatever you want to in this situation but it never defeats me and it never will. I’m not the greatest bantamweight of all time despite my injuries. I’m the greatest bantamweight of all time because of my injuries.”

Despite an impressive record (22-2), Cruz holds just one victory against a Top 15 bantamweight opponent, a split-decision nod over former champion TJ Dillashaw from UFC Fight Night 81 roughly three years back.

See you in 2020?