The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Cormier takes the best, then gives it back again
Daniel Cormier says life is good being a UFC champion, but it’s better being a UFC heavyweight champ.
ANAHEIM, CALIF. >> Life is good being a UFC champion. Daniel Cormier has never denied that.
But life is better being the UFC heavyweight champion.
“It’s the most coveted prize in all of sports, and it feels good to be the one holding it,” Cormier said.
“The heavyweight champion has always been the baddest man on the planet. It’s a great title to hold.”
Cormier has been living large for 13 months now, ever since the light heavyweight champion decided to raise his game and challenge the heavyweight champion. In less than five minutes against Stipe Miocic, a fighter many were calling the best heavyweight in UFC history, Cormier made history and knocked him out cold at UFC 226.
The man known simply as “DC” makes another run at cementing his legacy when he takes on Miocic again in the UFC 241 main event Aug. 17 at the Honda Center.
Miocic (18-3), an Eastlake North graduate and part-time firefighter in Cleveland, rose up the heavyweight ranks and won the title in 2016. His three successful title defenses are a UFC heavyweight record, speaking to the competitiveness of the division as well as the volatile nature of stepping into a cage with fellow behemoths.
Running down Miocic’s athletic accomplishments — “He’s a Division I wrestler, a Division I baseball player, he’s a UFC world champion, a Gold Gloves boxing champion” — the former NCAA All-American wrestler out of Oklahoma State and two-time U.S. Olympian is full of praise for his opponent and his athleticism.
“Stipe’s good, he’s very fast. He’s one of the (faster) heavyweights. He’s very accurate. He’s a good fighter. He’s a real good fighter,” Cormier said.
This is Cormier’s second title defense at heavyweight after choking out heavyhanded Derrick Lewis — “He hits harder than anybody I’ve been hit by” — in the second round at UFC 230 in November.
Cormier, 40, is no longer the light heavyweight champion, having relinquished the belt and gladly put the 205-pound division in his past. Cutting weight was one of the necessary evils for Cormier (22-1, 1 NC).
“It’s tough. You were like partly dead, like a walking dead person trying to make weight,” Cormier said. “It’s what I was trying to do to be a world champion. To be world champion, you gotta do what you gotta do.”
The giving
Part of Cormier’s sacrifice, and the pain and toll his body would endure in the days leading up to the light heavyweight weighins, was done out of love and respect.
Longtime friend Cain Velasquez, with whom he trains at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, was in his second reign as UFC heavyweight champion when Cormier came to the UFC in 2013 after a successful run in Strikeforce, where he won the Heavyweight Grand Prix.
Since Cormier had such deep faith in Velasquez’s grip on the title, which Velasquez eventually lost in 2015, the stocky 5-foot-11 Cormier opted to avoid any potential conflict and blaze his own trail.
“Ultimately, I felt like going down there would give me a
good chance to win the fight, to win the belt too,” Cormier said, “because as I was gonna grow into the heavyweights in the UFC, they’re bigger, more athletic, more gifted, and I figured I may run into some issues there.
“But that hasn’t been the case.”
Not that Cormier is a stranger to heartbreak and heartache. His life, as chronicled in a recent E:60 on ESPN, hasn’t been an easy one.
He was 7 when his father was gunned down. He was 24 when his 3-month-old daughter Kaedyn died in a car accident.
He was 25 when he came within a victory of a medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Four years later, as the captain of the 2008 Olympic wrestling team, his body shut down during a weight cut and he was hospitalized for kidney failure and pulled from competing in the Beijing Olympics.
And less than three weeks ago, his community was terrorized by the mass shooting at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival as three people were slain and 13 injured by a 19-year-old gunman, who died by suicide.
“You have a kid who lived there who said, ‘I’m gonna attack the heart of our community, the biggest thing that we have, I’m gonna try to go and ruin it,’” said Cormier, who said he was in Dublin, more than an hour’s drive north, when the shooting happened July 28.
“He cast such a dark shadow on such a beautiful thing for the city and the town. And … but it … unfortunately, we had casualties and injuries, but ultimately, it made the community stronger, so the guy failed.”
It is Gilroy where the Louisiana native decided a few years ago to make his home with his wife Salina and two children.
Just last year, Cormier brought two of his greatest passions together by agreeing to coach the wrestling team at Gilroy High.
“Wrestling and coaching is my passion and I do a lot of things because I like it. I love fighting. I love television. I love all those things,” said Cormier, who has been a UFC analyst for three years. “My ultimate passion is being a coach, instilling some of the lessons I’ve learned into some of these kids.
“That’s what I think my thing is to do on this earth, is to give back and try to pass on the knowledge that I’ve gained.”
The challenge
Cormier has only two blemishes on his MMA ledger, both courtesy of longtime light heavyweight rival Jon Jones. Jones defended his title and handed Cormier his first defeat via unanimous decision at UFC 182 in early 2015. Jones was stripped of the title for disciplinary reasons, allowing Cormier to win the vacant title in May 2015.
Jones returned and reclaimed the belt by becoming the first man to finish Cormier with a third-round TKO two years ago at UFC 214 at the Honda Center, but the title was returned to Cormier and the fight declared no contest after Jones tested positive for a banned substance.
UFC President Dana White can’t say enough about what Cormier has endured and achieved.
“Daniel Cormier is a great fighter, a great champion
and a great person. He does anything you ask of him. He’s an amazing ambassador for our sport,” White said.
“And who knows? If he stays at heavyweight, Daniel Cormier might still be undefeated.”
Cormier grins and appreciates the sentiment from his boss, but concedes that even that might be too tall a task to conquer. “I’m not sure you can stay undefeated at heavyweight. It takes too little, it’s too volatile, they’re too powerful, they’re too gifted,” he said.
Rosendo Sanchez, Cormier’s boxing coach, says the champ’s determination and diligence help make him unbeatable.
“I think he chose to be confident and believe in himself and believe that there’s no one that can beat him at heavyweight,” Sanchez said. “It’s just working hard and a work ethic that I don’t think nobody can beat. He just works so hard and goes out there and grinds people out.”
Cormier admits retirement — or a Jon Jones trilogy fight — could come soon, but he isn’t resting on his laurels. In addition to conquering Miocic on Aug. 17, he would like to slay some Southern California demons. He and Velasquez lost their titles at the Honda Center — and all by knockout.
Miocic is the only one standing in his way.
“I’m preparing for the very best version he’s ever been. Fast, quick, durable, cardio on point,” Cormier said. “I just prepare like I did the first time, like he was a monster. Be ready for anything because you don’t know what this guy is gonna bring to the table.”