D’oh!
We’ve all heard mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters say some truly, spectacularly dumb things over the years — Bryce Mitchell’s Hitler line, Tito Ortiz’s countless verbal fumbles — but former UFC Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz may have delivered the most baffling take I’ve seen in years.
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But before we get to it, here’s the setup.
UFC Flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja suffered a gruesome arm injury (watch it) just 26 seconds into his title fight against Joshua Van at UFC 323 last night (Sat., Dec. 6, 2025). The damage was so severe that Pantoja told the referee himself that he was done and wanted the fight stopped — which is an important detail.
Well, Cruz hopped onto X/Twitter and dropped this gem:
“I wish that Van vs Pantoja fight was aloud to keep going. It should be up to us as the fighter if we want to continue after that. We put the time in the training camp in that situation. People dislocate their arms and put it back in place and keep fighting all the time.”
Good grief.
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Now, I’m not gonna be the grammar police and clown him for “aloud” (instead of “allowed”) because I’ve made my own mistakes, but this take is just bad — like, impressively bad.
Again, Pantoja was the one who told the referee to stop the fight. And even if he didn’t, what exactly is the plan here? Pause a championship fight so he can magically heal a shredded arm mid-round?
And this is coming from a fighter who was sidelined for almost four years because of countless injuries. The irony is unreal.
According to UFC CEO Dana White, Pantoja suffered a shoulder injury and not a dislocated or broken elbow, but I don’t know about that one, boss. It very clearly did not look like his arm was okay. But hey, I’m not a doctor.
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I can only hope this was a ragebait tweet and me (and the entire MMA world) got baited hard, because this is going to go down as one of the dumbest things a fighter has ever said — well, at least until the next one.
I’ll leave you with some reactions to Cruz’s all-timer tweet.
For more UFC 323 results, coverage, and highlights click HERE.
