Urijah Faber wishes Dominick Cruz speedy recovery, wants Interim Title bout at UFC 148 with Renan Barao

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The news of Dominick Cruz's knee injury on Monday hit hard for the UFC. Wiping out a major rematch with Urijah Faber, built up by this season of The Ultimate Fighter, is a major blow to the organization and the bantamweight division, and leaves no one happy about the scenario they now find themselves in.

For Faber's part, he's supremely disappointed he doesn't get to have his rubber match with Cruz right now, but he also feels awful for his professional rival having to deal with the injury.

"It sucks for everybody, especially myself and Dominick," Faber said in a video post on Monday night. "I wish him a speedy recovery, you don't wish that on anybody. Now I'm just waiting to hear what happens."

Faber is still readying to fight on July 7 at UFC 148 as planned, and believes Cruz's time on the sidelines will lead to an Interim Championship bout being booked. He even has a couple of names he'd like to fight for that belt.

"I'm thinking an Interim title," he said. "Once this surgery goes through he'll be out another nine months. I'm hoping for a top contender. Renan Barao in my opinion is next up, Michael McDonald after that and Ivan Menjivar after that."

Regardless of who the fight comes against, Faber's ready to fight. Still, he assures fans that he and Cruz will get to settle the score down the line.

"I'm just waiting to see, I know as much as you guys do, but I'm ready to scrap July 7," Faber said. "As far as I'm concerned that's what's going down.

"Don't worry you guys, me and Dom will scrap soon."

Penick's Analysis: I can't argue with Faber's order too much. The only other name I suggested earlier today was Brad Pickett, and he was absolutely a last resort option for this fight. Faber-Barao makes a ton of sense with Barao already on the card, and because Cruz will be kept out of action for over an entire year it makes sense for that fight to be an Interim Title bout. Whoever wins that fight will not be waiting for Cruz the same way Carlos Condit plans to wait for Georges St-Pierre (and to be fair to Condit he was prepared to fight Nick Diaz again right away before Diaz's positive drug test came to light) and they'll defend the Interim belt once before Cruz can return, provided they themselves don't get injured. That's the way it should go, and we'll probably hear something along those lines from the UFC later this week.

[Urijah Faber art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/UFC_2/article_13224.shtml

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