Cormier’s time at hand
Has shot to rewrite narrative in rematch with Jones
For more than two years, Daniel Cormier has sought a rematch with Jon
Jones, the only man to beat him in the Octagon. In that quest, Cormier has become a central character in the narrative of Jones’ career, one of self-inflicted setbacks that threaten Jones’ potential to go down as the best mixed martial arts fighter ever.
The rematch has fallen apart several times since their initial January 2015 encounter, most dramatically last July when word came on the eve of UFC 200 that Jones had flunked a doping test for anti-estrogen agents. A video of Cormier getting the news backstage showed him stomp his right foot repeatedly in frustration, his voice cracking as he offered to sign a waiver in an urgent gesture to preserve the fight.
Since then, Jones was stripped of the UFC title, took his doping case to arbitration and lost, and served a suspension that ended earlier this month. This on top of a positive test for cocaine, a car wreck he caused and fled, and making gullible marks out of fans who invested in Jones’ road to redemption, a story he’s pitched to the fight public many times.
Through it all, Cormier never lost sight of the fact that Jones is his chief foil, his most marketable foe, and the opponent with whom he’ll forever be associated. And one he has to beat if his own story — not Jones’ — is to define his career. The rematch is set for Saturday at UFC 214 in Anaheim, Calif., and Cormier is happy to reap the proceeds of fans buying the redemption story Jones is selling.
“People do want to believe that the greats can get everything in order, and be who we expect, or envision, them to be,” Cormier told the Herald last week. “If people love the story, and people want to believe in redemption, at the end of the night, it really does affect my bottom line. I do like the position that I’m in. In order for Jon to be the person that he’s always kind of tried to perceive himself as, he has to lose, he has to live on the other side. Everything has been perfect for him inside of the octagon. In life, it’s been tough.”
A wrestling Olympian from Louisiana who trains out of San Jose, Calif., Cormier, 38, has the trappings of the icon fans want Jones to be, yet his wrestling-heavy and more methodical style, and his past scolding of Jones for his misdeeds, gradually turned fans against him. It was most stark at UFC 200. Despite accepting a last-minute fight against
Anderson Silva to stay on the card, Cormier was pilloried for neutralizing the all-time great striker with grappling for three rounds, and not engaging him on his feet.
Even as he won the then-vacant light heavyweight championship five months after losing to Jones, it took some time for Cormier — among the sport’s warmest and most articulate personalities — to adjust to the fact that Jones’ embracing his personal failings, instead of apologizing for them, made him a fan favorite.
“I think if Jon would have just come out and said, ‘You know what? I’m flawed. I’m a champion, but I’m a flawed person,’ nobody would be that upset with all the things that he’s done,” Cormier said.
“I do want to be a role model for young kids in the future, but I am flawed,” he added. “I have done things in my life that I am not proud of to date, and I’m sure I’ll do things later. I’ve been divorced, and it was my fault that my first marriage did not work. I was unfaithful, I was not true. For all the good that I try to put out there, I know that I have made my mistakes, and I try to learn from them.”
But Cormier can cast his virtues aside, too. In the run-up to the rematch — sparked by Jones supposedly mentioning his children in trash talk — Cormier has cursed like a sailor and even dropped a racial slur on Jones in press conferences, and egged on booing fans who suddenly sided with Jones.
Said Cormier: “To talk and be condescending, or just letting people know that you really don’t affect me, that’s a part of me, too. People will like me, people will dislike me, but I let them see who I am. (Fans) just made the decision that, well, we don’t really like you. I don’t know what brought it on, but I can’t let it affect me any more . . . I just know that my decisions now, they can’t truly center around trying to do what I feel is best for the fans, because they don’t appreciate if you do that.”
Cormier is shutting out thoughts that Jones could again jeopardize this fight, instead focusing on what he can control. Despite the emotional roller coaster of last summer’s cancellation, he prioritized this rematch against Jones even after initially ignoring Jones at ringside after his April win over Anthony Johnson. Cormier instead called out British contender Jimi Manuwa, also at ringside. But in the back of his mind Cormier wanted Jones, and let that be known when the UFC called to book his next fight.
“They said, ‘ How about you vs. Jimi Manuwa in Anaheim July 29?’ I said, ‘I’ll fight July 29, but I want to fight Jon Jones. He will be eligible, I want to fight Jon Jones,’ ” Cormier said. “And originally there were a few questions on what day he was wanting to fight, and all this other stuff. And I said (to Jones), ‘Nah, these decisions aren’t yours anymore. These are my decisions. So we fight here.’ And it worked out.”
On July 4, Cormier posted an Instagram photo of him on the wrestling mat in his Olympic wrestling singlet. Cormier took fourth in the 2004 Games, and was named U.S. captain in 2008, but couldn’t compete that year due to kidney problems resulting from cutting weight.
“So lucky to have represented this great country,” Cormier wrote.
“By not making weight?” Jones quickly retorted in his own post.
On Saturday, Cormier gets the chance to take away Jones’ grounds to interject, to hold the outcome of their first fight over his head. If he comes up short, he further emboldens Jones, and offers himself up as the vessel through which Jones, paradoxically, reclaims the spotlight.
“He was a better fighter on Jan. 3, 2015, take nothing away from him,” Cormier said. “But this time the fight will be different. I have made the necessary changes in my fights, in my life, to become and stay the champion that the UFC deserves.”