UFC bantamweight champ Dominick Cruz is confident going into Friday’s title bout

Dominick Cruz took another hard look at the small window of his fighting career when he shook hands goodbye with retiring longtime foe Urijah Faber earlier this month.

“Of course, when I see him stop, it’s like, ‘Whoa, my No. 1 rival is gone. Who else is there to beat?’” said Cruz, 31, the UFC bantamweight champion.

The answer arrives Friday night in the co-main event of UFC 207 at T-Mobile Arena, where Cruz (22-1) will meet Faber’s No. 1 protege, Cody Garbrandt (10-0).

Garbrandt, 25, is riding a trio of first-round knockouts and has vowed that his power punching and pressure will finish off his mentor’s bitter foe.

That’s the rub with Cruz, because he’s already thought hard about his life after mixed martial arts.

“I’ve taken a legitimate look at retirement,” Cruz said of the three knee injuries and groin tear that limited him to one fight between October 2011 and January 2016.

“At a certain point, when I let go and was done -- when I stopped and could say I was blessed and thankful to be a champion, when I finally enjoyed life from this different perspective -- that’s when I healed. Letting go healed me.

“And that taught me to let go of the things I can’t control, to find happiness from another source. The fighters who retire and come back, they never find that peace. I was forced to. I don’t need fighting. It’s the cherry on top to this beautiful life I’ve been given. The most painful lesson ever, but I’m so glad I learned it. Those injuries were not a curse at all.”

After Cruz defeated T.J. Dillashaw in January to recapture the belt he’d lost because of injuries, Cruz beat Faber by a convincing decision in June at the Forum to close out their trilogy. Now, Cruz confronts the eager Garbrandt.

All three men have trained at Faber’s Sacramento gym, Team Alpha Male, and the old feud still burns for Cruz.

“Don’t think Faber’s not begging for me to lose now, that he’s not cutting every single corner to make sure I fail,” Cruz said. “[Garbrandt] can think that since he sparred with Faber, [Joseph] Benavidez, Dillashaw, ‘I’m going to knock out Dominick,’ but the thing they always seem to miss is the griminess that I carry in there.

“Who’s to say I don’t smoke every one of those teammates?”

Cruz said the common link for Team Alpha Male fighters is an effort to “visualize, believe, dream and focus on positive thinking.... Ignorance is bliss to Cody, but he hasn’t quite seen things enough to know what he should fear in a matchup like me.”

Cruz’s fighting style is to evade and counterattack pressure. Dillashaw couldn’t effectively catch him, and Faber’s biggest swings missed.

“I think [Garbrandt] hits powerfully, but when you’re wearing four-ounce gloves, everybody hits hard,” Cruz said.

“He’s knocking out stationary targets. I’m no stationary target. I understand how to dismantle pressure, I understand movement and I understand what he has to do to apply the pressure.”

The Garbrandt fight, Cruz says, equates to perspective versus exuberance.

“I welcome his confidence, his pressure and his ignorance,” Cruz said.

“He’s assuming he’s stronger than me and his power will overwhelm me. I’ve seen and heard all that before. It’s a broken record. He’s a child, an emotional mess.

“And I know what I am.”

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimespugmire