It has been said that the only person who beats Jon Jones is Jon Jones. As poetic as that may be, it is an actual fact that the only person to have beaten Daniel Cormier is also Jon Jones. It is for this reason that Jon Jones reacted with incredulity when Daniel Cormier maintained his #1 spot on the pound-for-pound rankings, even after Jones regained the light heavyweight championship at UFC 232. But for Cormier, he has earned his place at #1 and has broken free from being in Jon Jones’s shadow:
“For what I’ve done, winning the heavyweight title, everything was so tied to (Jones) initially that me getting the heavyweight title was something so completely separate, especially being that I was undefeated in the weight class prior,” Cormier told UFC.com. “Going up into a weight that was always thought to be my weight class, winning the UFC title, it helped me.”
Jon Jones is carrying on with his UFC career once again atop the light heavyweight throne and is scheduled to make the first defense of his second reign at UFC 235 against Antony Smith. But Cormier believes that unless Jones fights him again, his comeback and redemption cannot be complete.
“I think for Jones to truly get back everything that he’s lost, it would be good for him and I to fight again. For me, I’ve established my career outside of him. He’s done things outside of me, too, but for him, it would be good if he got to fight me again,” said Cormier.
As for Jon Jones’s reaction to Cormier’s place ahead of him in the pound-for-pound rankings, Daniel Cormier only revels in it.
“It feels great,” Cormier said. “Even when they keep releasing the pound-for-pound rankings and I’m ranked above him and he goes, ‘That’s BS,’ absolutely not. You are a great fighter, but you’re a great fighter at the weight class you’ve always stayed at. I’ve done it in multiple weight classes and pound-for-pound says it’s a fighting style that translates across weight classes, and I’ve been the champion in two of them. So I think I am the definition of pound-for-pound.”
Do you agree with Daniel Cormier? Should he be ranked ahead of Jon Jones on the UFC’s pound-for-pound rankings?
