Dominick Cruz views his next fight as his final one.

After a two-plus-year layoff, Cruz (24-4 MMA, 7-3 UFC) returns Feb. 22 vs. Rob Font (21-8 MMA, 11-7 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 252 in Seattle.

The sudden reemergence in the competitive field had many fans wondering if the 39-year-old would hang up the gloves thereafter. Cruz revealed Thursday during an interview with ESPN that, in his mind, that’s the case.

“For me, it is,” Cruz said. “(It’s) not because of my mentality, not because of my skillset. Yeah, I lost my last fight, but I was in that fight every minute of the fight. When I got finished, I was going for the kill, which got me hurt. It wasn’t one of those situations where I was bowing out of the fight. It was that I was in the fight trying to kill the guy, and I hurt myself, and that led to the finish eventually. I looked at that fight. I go, ‘OK, don’t be too harsh on yourself. This is part of the game. You get hit. You get caught. These things happen.’

“But I was in the fight. I wasn’t slower. I wasn’t looking behind a step. I wasn’t not choosing the good techniques. Those are all things I add to my mindset before moving into this last nine months as well. The skills are still there. It’s just a matter of all the injuries and stuff. Can I keep them together to get through the camp? The camp is the hard part. We all know that. It’s not really the fight.”

Cruz, who turns 40 on March 9, has competed as a professional since January 2005. His bout vs. Font will be his 11th in the UFC, though a decorated eight-fight tenure in WEC preceded his onboarding into the company.

A multi-time UFC bantamweight champion whose career was riddled with injuries, Cruz will still go down in the history books as one of the greatest fighters in his division’s history. He continues to work as a lead color commentator on UFC broadcasts.

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