Urijah Faber and Dominick Cruz have exchanged trash-talk by phone for years

Urijah Faber may have lost six consecutive title bouts, but that isn’t stopping him from thinking he’s in position to challenge newly crowned UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz.

Cruz (21-1 MMA, 4-0 UFC) recaptured the title with a split-decision win over T.J. Dillashaw at UFC Fight Night 81, which took place Sunday at TD Garden in Boston and aired on FOX Sports 1.

Faber (33-8 MMA, 9-4 UFC) and Cruz have a feud dating back to 2007, when then-WEC champ Faber picked up a guillotine-submission victory at WEC 26. Cruz avenged the loss with a thrilling unanimous decision win at UFC 132.

The rivals were set for a rubber match at UFC 148 in July 2012 after serving as coaches opposite one another on “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 15. However, a Cruz injury put the fight off, and he appeared in the cage just one time between then and recapturing the title this past weekend.

Faber, who has won three straight fights at bantamweight, thinks the time is now to finally pull the trigger and complete the trilogy.

“That’s the fight for me next,” Faber told MMAjunkie while in attendance at UFC Fight Night 81. “One hundred percent. We’ve been trying to do this fight forever.

“Somehow, the UFC messed up and put us in this promotional thing where we had to do teamwork on a military exhibit. We were about to fight each other, and they put us on this PR thing, and for two days we actually got along pretty well and exchanged phone numbers in there. Throughout the years, we’ve talked (expletive). ‘Finally, let’s go, mother(expletive). You going to heal up?’ Once every year we talked some (expletive).”

The reasons for Cruz vs. Faber III are obvious, on paper. But Cruz has made it clear that he doesn’t view Faber as a deserving challenger, instead focusing on Faber’s run of failed attempts to win a title fight since November 2008.

That said, Faber admitted that there has been no promise of a shot at Cruz, who stated that he entered Sunday’s fight with a foot injury. A Dillashaw rematch or injury layoff could stand in Faber’s way.

“I haven’t heard one guarantee,” Faber said. “But they’re not dummies. There’s one guy who has beat Cruz, and we had a knockdown drag-out the second time. I put him on his butt on multiple occasions. It’s something we’ve been building up for a long time.”

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