Daniel Cormier: It’s Time For Me To Fight For The Belt, Even If I Have To Wait
Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix winner and UFC light-heavyweight Daniel Cormier is eying a UFC 173 bout with MMA legend Dan Henderson, and a win will likely score either man a crack at the 205-pound title. Cormier has made waves in the heavyweight division by running through Frank Mir and Roy Nelson, and easily TKO’d Pat Cummins in his divisional debut at UFC 170.
The bout against Hendo will pit two heavy-handed wrestlers in a battle for first place in the title race, and DC is determined to get his way. Check out what he said during The MMA Hour this evening:
“This will be my fifth top-10 win, and I’m not fighting anyone else. I’m going to sit and wait and get better, and I’m going to wait to fight Jon Jones. I’ve waited long enough. If it took nine months, I’d wait nine months. It’s time for me to fight for the belt. It’s not that I’m afraid I’ll lose to any of these guys, because I don’t believe that. I think I can beat them all. I just think that at a point, you have to make a stand about what’s important for me.”
Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier have had a long-standing beef that includes near fights in public, twitter bashing and just general animosity towards each other. The seemingly inevitable fight between the two seems to be on the brink of becoming a reality. DC then discussed Hendo:
“I’m a little surprised that he’s fighting as fast as he is,” Cormier admitted. “I mean, he did get rocked pretty good in that fight, he got dinged pretty good. Normally you need to give yourself some time to recover and let your brain kind of resettle. It’s a quick turnaround for Dan Henderson.”
“This may be the quickest turnaround he’s had in quite some time. So yeah, I was a little surprised, but also I like Dan Henderson. I look up to Dan Henderson for the idea that, if you ask Dan Henderson to fight, he probably just says, ‘well what’s the name of the venue’ and ‘tell me the date and I’ll be there.'”
Another interesting point to raise is that Henderson used TRT in his fight against Shogun, but is ready to fight in May. The ban means that he will have to come off the controversial treatment, but will be ready to fight on the same weekend that ‘The Phenom’ claimed was hindered by time constraints. Something tells me there is more than meets the eye with the whole Belfort situation. Cormier then discussed Jones vs. Gustafsson II:
“I’m not saying he doesn’t have a chance. I’m just saying that if I had to bet my money, or if I asked 10 people who wins this fight, nine out of those 10 people would say Jon Jones, because honestly, I believe that he’s better because he has more tools.”
“When you look at Jon on paper against a lot of people, he seems to match up well against every single one of us. He seems to holds the advantages against every single one of us. It’s the intangibles. It’s the things that you can’t measure on a piece of paper that it’s going to take to beat Jon Jones — the things that I believe I hold in spades.”
Cormier must first get past Henderson at UFC 173, but it would appear that he holds huge advantages over the older man in Hendo. ‘Dangerous Dan’ has been banging for a long time now, and has suffered his first KO loss, got the crap beat out of him by Shogun (twice) although in victory, and has now had to come off TRT just two months before fighting Cormier.
If I was a betting man, I’d put the mortgage on Henderson taking a beating at 173. That being said, Hendo is a tough, grizzly bastard that never quits. Who takes it, the young gun or the war torn veteran?
