The first time I saw Dominick Cruz fight live was in 2010 at the final WEC event, and it left me with a feeling of deep sympathy for his opponent.

The poor guy. His name was Scott Jorgensen and he’d won five fights in a row to earn a shot at Cruz’s bantamweight title. So it was a big fight for that reason, sure, but also because the WEC was finally being shut down and absorbed into the UFC. Here was a chance to show up in the UFC as a champion, an instant somebody. All he had to do was beat Cruz, a cocky 25-year-old who had a way of talking trash on his opponents by calmly explaining all the reasons why they had no chance to beat him.

Jorgensen was confident. A couple days before the event he told the assembled media that he wasn’t worried about Cruz’s darting, mongoose style of fighting. He hadn’t watched tape on him, he said. He didn’t need to. All Cruz did, Jorgensen told us, was move in and out a bunch. He’d go right after this guy and run him over, he said.

When Cruz heard this he just shook his head. It was like he almost felt bad for what was about to happen.

What I remember most about that fight was Jorgensen’s teammate and coach, Joe Warren, screaming the same instructions over and over.

“Put your hands on him, Scotty!” he shouted from cageside.

Scotty tried. But every time he moved forward, Cruz smacked him in the face and then disappeared. Jorgensen reached out and found only air. There was definitely something hitting him over and over again, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t hit back at it. He couldn’t even find it. It was like watching a man try to fistfight a swarm of bees.

When Cruz showed up in the UFC after that as the first champion of the brand new bantamweight division, it was as if he’d always been there. He had this aura about him. Like, of course the title belonged to him. That was only right and natural. His first two title defenses came against Urijah Faber and Demetrious Johnson. When they couldn’t beat him, you got the sense that everyone better just get used to Cruz being the champ for as long as he cared to be.

That’s how naive we were then. We had no idea what kind of cruelty the MMA gods had planned for the ol’ “Dominator.”

If you’re going to tell the story of Cruz’s fighting career now that he’s officially called it quits just about a month before turning 40, you can’t not talk about the injuries. Here was a guy who fought 18 times in the first five years of his career and only three times in the next five. He tore his ACL, then his groin, then his other ACL. He broke his arm, threw out his shoulder, then threw out his other shoulder.

Around the third time he blew out his knee, Cruz said UFC CEO Dana White called him up and told him that he had to be the unluckiest person he’d ever met. Cruz asked what he was supposed to do with that information. White told him he didn’t know. Cruz didn’t know either, but he knew he couldn’t just accept that.

His career had never been a matter of luck, he said. So he had to keep trying, keep coming back. Whatever this was that was happening to him, he had to beat it.

He never really did. At least not for long. There was that time he came storming back in 2014 from the injury that cost him the UFC bantamweight title. Three years of his prime had just evaporated right when he was at the top of his game. Surely, the man had to have some rust on him. But no, he showed back up and immediately trucked Takeya Mizugaki at UFC 178. It took him all of 61 seconds to show us how very back he was. Three months later, boom, another knee injury.

He came back from that one too, of course. In the span of one calendar year in 2016 he reclaimed the title, defended it against Faber (again), and then lost it to Cody Garbrandt, who absolutely styled on him in a way we’d never even thought possible. Garbrandt was out there popping and locking in between knockdowns. It was only the second time Cruz had ever been beaten, and it was shocking to see.

But you know what he did then? He showed up to the post-fight press conference and very eloquently explained what had happened in the fight. No excuses or complaints. He gave a detailed breakdown of the loss, just like he’d been doing for years as an on-air analyst and commentator for UFC events.

That was UFC 207. Cruz and Garbrandt were the co-main event. The headliner was Amanda Nunes vs. Ronda Rousey for the UFC women’s bantamweight title. Rousey took a bad beating and then disappeared entirely from the sport. Cruz lost his title and then showed up to explain how and why.

He didn’t owe anybody that, and when I asked him why he did it, I remember he said it was for his own benefit. If he wasn’t willing to admit to to his failures and look them straight on, he said, how would he ever learn what he needed to from them?

There’s a couple different ways we could view Cruz’s career. Is it the biggest what-if in MMA history? All those years lost to injury. Who knows what he might have done if only his ligaments and bones had held together better? Or maybe it’s a tale of remarkable resiliency. Life kept knocking him down and Cruz kept getting back up.

Probably it’s both. Cruz has a stubbornness to him that’s basically beyond his control. He’ll argue with you about anything. Just ask the people who talk into microphones next to him. Such a man was never going to lie down and accept the many betrayals of his own body. He had to keep coming back. Whatever else we may say about Cruz’s career now that it’s over, let us say that.