Cruz was one of those fighters who became elite seemingly more for style than skill.
At a basic level, fighting can be skill vs skill, but there are approaches fighters take to limit their opponents ability to use their skills. The most common is wrestling, and that's often why we see arguments about "better fighters losing." Dom was pretty unique in that, although he was good at wrestling, that wasn't how he shut down his opponents skills.
The problem with this approach is that when you meet an opponent where your approach doesn't shut then down, that's often where we see the argument come up that they got "exposed." Like when someone we know is a really good wrestler suddenly can't take an opponent down, they look truly like a fish out of water, so opinion on their skill level tanks. This happened to Dom against Cody, a guy no one really thinks has elite skills, but wasn't at all biting on Dom's unorthodox punch angles or his erratic head movement. So all of a sudden, Cruz's dancing not only doesn't look effective, it looks straight up silly. "If it works, it works" only works when it works, and when it doesn't..
That isn't to say he doesn't have skills, just that I think it was nearly secondary to his success compared to his style. And a lot of people have a bit of bias towards judging skills in p4p arguments than style, so that's usually going to have people think of Aldo over Cruz. Aldo just seems "better," and even if they were to have fought and Aldo lost, the relative term to describe Dom might not become "better," but instead something like "more effective."
But personally, I don't think that happens. I think Aldo is just all around better, and have said since Aldo dropped that I don't care about them ever fighting cuz Cruz had nothing for him
