Cormier was confident of making it two for two against the Cleveland native, being 15-0 in the division and coming off an emphatic knockout win over his foe will do that. But as camp wore on, the wear of a career spent on the mats and the Octagon showed up on a daily basis. Most would have decided to ask for a postponement.
Cormier didn’t. He showed up on fight night and was winning on all three judges’ scorecards when Miocic caught up to him with a ferocious body assault that led to a stoppage at 4:09 of the fourth round.
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“I fought a horrendous fight,” said Cormier, a statement backed up by his longtime manager, coach and friend, Bob Cook. “Even though I was winning, I fought with a s**t ton of emotion, I wasn’t myself.
“And on the finish, yes, Stipe Miocic hurt me with that last shot to the body,” he continues. “He hurt me with a punch, but I cut corners in my training because I was hurt. So when my back would start to get tight, we would work around it. Or if anything felt tight, we worked around it because we wanted to get to the fight. So in that moment when Stipe Miocic was finishing the fight, I didn’t respond. I didn’t shoot a single leg, I didn’t grab an under hook, I didn’t really do anything because I was so fatigued then that I didn’t fight back. I’ve been hurt worse before in my career. But because I was ready to fight, because I had trained the way I’ve been known to train, I fought out of those positions. The knee that (Alexander) Gustafsson hit me with was much worse. That was a much bigger shot than I got with from Miocic. The kick that (Jon) Jones hit me with, when I fell, the first thing I did was grab an under hook and I tried to go to a single leg, but Jones, being a great finisher, gave me space and gave me the illusion that I had an out when I really didn’t. But I was still fighting. In the Miocic fight, I didn’t even have the energy to keep fighting and that was because of the concessions we had to make in my training to just get to the fight.”
It wasn’t the way Cormier wanted to go out of the sport, so here we are. Sure, he didn’t want to wait for Miocic from the injuries he suffered in the fight, and then the COVID-19 pandemic showed up, but he was willing to take as long as necessary to secure one last fight against one of only two men to beat him in a 22-2, 1 NC career. And this time, he’s healthy, he’s been able to train like he wants to, even with old friends Cain Velasquez and Luke Rockhold, and win, lose, or draw, he’s okay with retirement after this weekend’s bout.
