In the weeks leading up to his rematch with arch rival Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier only envisaged that his hand would be raised on the night
A brutal head kick landed by Jones wobbled the former light heavyweight champion before he was pummelled with follow up shots while laid out on the canvas.
The loss for Cormier was a hard one to take. “DC” had only ever tasted defeat in a stellar professional career prior to that night and that was also to the man who had now taken his belt. Tears fell and a concussed confusion rendered the former champ disoriented and truly heartbroken.
Cormier spoke in detail for the first time following his loss to Jones in Anaheim in July, recounting the pain he felt as a result of failing to beat his most bitter rival:
“Ah man you know, still pretty bummed out,” Cormier told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “You know, it’s a tough pill to swallow.”
“You gotta remember that I’m a guy that wants to be the best. I train hard. I work hard. I feel like I was ready to go. I feel like I was prepared and I was very disappointed in the result of the fight. But, as I look back on it, I was upset but I think a lot of the sadness came from, I feel like my coaches, I felt like they had done such a tremendous job preparing me for this particular event and for me to not be able to get the job done, that’s where I think a lot of my sadness came from. Obviously, I was disappointed with the fight but I felt bad for the people closest to me because I felt they had invested so much and had done so much to prepare me and I was ready to go.”
Helwani also asked if Cormier was prepared for any other scenario than a win, to which the former champion answered honestly:
“I can’t really say it hurt more than I thought it would,” Cormier remarked. “I knew that if it didn’t work out it would be very disappointing. You know, in the build up I didn’t really think about if it didn’t go that way. I was preparing to win. I think if you start allowing that doubt to creep into your mind, it becomes a reality. So for 12 weeks, my reality was that I was going to get my hand raised.
“Me being disappointed and sad, it just shows that it means a lot, you know? It might mean too much. I guess we as athletes need to better separate those things but for me, it’s not like that. I’m a guy that really does commit myself one hundred percent to a goal and when I didn’t get it done, you see the emotion, you know? Honestly.”
