Daniel Cormier: With win over Jon Jones, ‘I’m the greatest fighter ever’
LA MIRADA, Calif. -- Jon Jones said Thursday that Daniel Cormier can never be the greatest fighter of all-time because he came into the sport during the wrong era - Jones’ era.
Needless to say, Cormier disagrees.
The UFC light heavyweight champion was last out for Thursday’s UFC 214 open workouts. And when he was apprised of Jones’ comments (“he’s f*cking around with the wrong era”) earlier in the event, Cormier said that this was, in fact, his era.
And that if he defeats Jones on Saturday night at Anaheim’s Honda Center, he’ll become the one known as the greatest fighter of all-time.
“This is my era,” Cormier said. “I win Saturday night, and I’m the greatest fighter ever. Why is it not my era? Because he beat me one time?”
That one time, of course, was UFC 182, when then-champion Jones and Cormier went the distance in a competitive fight before Jones scored a clear-cut, unanimous decision victory.
What irks Cormier is that even though the duo went the distance, Jones brags about the win as if he finished Cormier, similar to some of the biggest victories of Jones’ career.
“All his praise that he’s giving himself on that victory like he dominated me tells me he did something he didn’t know he could do,” Cormier said. “He won a fight. He didn’t wipe the mat with me, but he’s walking around here like he just – he’s walking around like he beat Lyoto Machida or ‘Shogun’ Rua.”
Cormier admits to having a fantasy about what he’ll do after beating Jones on Saturday and then again in a presumed trilogy fight. Cormier, who won the vacant belt in May 2015 after Jones was stripped of the belt due to his legal issues, would simply hand the belt back.
“How about I walk across the stage and say, ‘Here, how about you deal with what I’ve been dealing with the last two years?’ and leave,” Cormier said. “Would that not be the ultimate ‘f*ck you?’ I think he’ll win again after I’m done. After I beat him twice and if I walk off into the sunset, or I leave this division, he’ll be the champion again. I want him to deal with what I’ve had to deal with where he is going to be berated for something that is not in his control.”
He later clarified that wouldn’t actually step away from his championship. But Cormier wants Jones to feel the same heat Cormier got, in which he was proclaimed as a fake champion in many circles.
“That’s what’s going to happen after the third fight,” Cormier said. “I’m going to say, ‘Here, this is his. I want him to be the champion right now.’ So all the people that said they gave me a title, I will literally give him the title and say, ‘You’re the champ now, deal with this (expletive).”
