Henry Cejudo seemingly didn’t like Song Yadong’s call-out of MMA legend Dominick Cruz. Yadong secured a spectacular first-round KO win over Marlon Moraes at the UFC Fight Night: Santos vs. Ankalaev event on March 12th, and he then proceeded to respectfully challenge Cruz to a fight.
Cejudo, a former UFC flyweight and bantamweight champion, is no stranger to Cruz. ‘The Messanger' beat Cruz via second-round TKO at UFC 249 in May 2020 to successfully defend his bantamweight belt.
Cruz later blamed the bout’s referee Keith Peterson for stopping the fight early. Additionally, the UFC commentator and former UFC bantamweight champion suggested that Peterson smelled like alcohol and cigarettes. Intriguingly, Peterson also officiated the aforementioned Yadong-Moraes matchup.
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Furthermore, Cruz has been a vocal critic of his fellow UFC commentators’ work. Henry Cejudo addressed these points and jibed at ‘The Dominator,’ referring to him as ‘Dominick Snooze’. On The Triple C & Schmo Show, Cejudo stated:
“I’m impressed. I like him (Song Yadong). I think he should fight ‘Dominick Snooze.’” Cejudo added, “I hate the way these guys call out fights – ‘Oh, I respect him. I watch him when I was a little kid. I really want to fight.’ Dude, you’re not going to get the fight like that. Insult the man. Tell him he’s ‘Dominick Snooze.’ Tell him he smells like booze and cigarettes."
"Tell him that he absolutely makes you sick. Tell him he wants to fire all his co-workers, Daniel Cormier; here he did it with Kenny Florian. Tell him that he’s a dirtbag, and I guarantee you’ll get the fight. But these guys – ‘Oh, my God. Peace, and love, and blah, blah, blah.’ Get the hell out of here.”
Watch Henry Cejudo address Song Yadong’s call-out of Dominick Cruz in the video below:
Chael Sonnen on Henry Cejudo’s meteoric rise as an MMA coach
Henry Cejudo retired from MMA in May 2020, but he's expressed interest in returning to face UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski. Regardless, this fight hasn't materialized yet.
Meanwhile, Cejudo has recently found great success as a coach, training elite current and former UFC champions at the Fight Ready gym in Arizona. In an edition of Beyond the Fight, Chael Sonnen addressed Cejudo’s rapid rise as an MMA coach. Sonnen said:
"Henry's been coaching for a couple of months, he's got a world champion (Deiveson Figueiredo)...you coach your whole life hoping to get one, Henry's already done it. He was handed a world champion in (Zhang) Weili. He's got (Jiri) Prochazka...(He's) got Jon Jones, who's got a world title on his mind. I mean, this is the fastest rise to success.”