After two years at at the apex of MMA as the UFC light heavyweight champion, Daniel Cormier was devastated by a third round knockout loss to Jon Jones at UFC 214 in July. At the time, he was rightfully broken by the fact of losing to his fierce rival for the second time.
The emotional low that Cormier reached after the fight upset him so much that he planned to throw out the UFC belts that were given to him every time he defended the title. Speaking to Ariel Helwani on Monday’s 400th MMA Hour episode, he revealed that he really would have done so if his wife had not urged him to do otherwise.
“I was pissed off, man. I just couldn’t believe that that happened,” Cormier said (via MMA Fighting). “You don’t understand me, you know? It’s like this thing, I guess it’s like a wrestling thing, you get so mad, you don’t think about the the emotion and reaction, and then you regret it later. I would have regretted throwing those away. My wife wouldn’t let me.”
With Jones’ second PED-related controversy in the UFC stemming from a failed in-competition drug test for UFC 214, the fight was overturned to a no contest, and Cormier was reinstated as champion. But even so, ‘DC’ refuses to put up his UFC belts along with his other keepsakes as a professional fighter.
“I had a fight party last week to watch Luke and ‘Canelo’ fights and I have this movie room in my house. I have a whole bunch of pictures and fight stuff and memories and stuff of my fights and all my championships,” Cormier said. “And when everyone came over, they saw my Strikeforce title, and King of the Cage, and XMMA and they were like ‘hey, where are your UFC championships?’”
“I still haven’t put those back up. I tried to throw them away but my wife wouldn’t let me. So I just put them away in my closet. I’m still not at the point now where I can take all these belts out and face them every day.”
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