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This post originally appeared on the Bloody Elbow Substack newsletter.
UFC mic man Daniel Cormier: ‘There’s no suing in fighting’
In his November 24 YouTube video, former two-division UFC Champion and current fight commentator Daniel Cormier makes a declaration to his viewers: “There’s no suing in fighting.” What prompted this statement was the third and final segment of the video, which focuses on the feud between Sean Strickland and Ian Machado Garry. The feud, which has taken over social media, was also the video’s most replayed segment and the segment after which the video was named: “Daniel Cormier REACTS to Sean Strickland and Ian Garry controversy: ‘there’s NO SUING IN FIGHTING!’”
13:20 into the video, Cormier begins to explain the context of the feud, maintaining as close to an unbiased position as possible. He personally knows everyone involved and he’s not interested in taking sides, he says. What he is interested in is addressing Machado Garry’s threat to take legal action against Strickland.
“Like I said when Logan Paul tried it, there is no suing in fighting,” he says. “You cannot try to sue [anybody] in fighting. You’ve got to just go at them in a different way. It’s the way it is.”
The finality in his statement piqued my interest—not in relation to the feud, per se, but because of how he applies it to combat sports as an unspoken—but widely followed—rule specifically regarding trash talk.
Trash talk, of course, comes hand-in-hand with sports: this is a given. Each sport has its own code of conduct that outlines the boundaries of trash talk, with consequences that range from 15-yard penalties to technical fouls—code violations that may result in an ejection, a point forfeiture, or even a loss. But in combat sports, where fighting promotions and organizations also have their own codes of conduct for contracted fighters to follow, why is it that personal attacks are so common? Is it the expected violence, and the promotion that comes with this violence, that make these attacks so acceptable?
A brief history lesson in pre-fight trash talk
Before the rise of social media, fighters traditionally addressed their targets in spaces that guaranteed media coverage: press conferences, weigh-ins, pre- and post-fight interviews.
There’s Mike Tyson, standing in the ring after his 38-second fight with Lou Savarese, calling out Lennox Lewis: “I want your heart. I want to eat his children..”
There’s Prince Naseem Hamed, sitting on the side of the ring after his fight with Jose Badillo. Like Tyson, he calls out his next opponent—who just so happened to be there, ringside. Hamed drapes his arm over Kevin Kelley and says, “He’s right in front of me, and I can honestly tell you that I’m gonna knock him spark out.”
And who could forget the Greatest? When he still went by Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali had already perfected the art of trash talk. When asked by an interviewer to predict how many rounds it will take for his opponent, Henry Cooper, to fall, Ali said, “Well, Henry Cooper’s nothing but a tramp. He’s a bum. I’m the world’s greatest. He must fall in five rounds.”
Back then, fighters had to make the most of their screen time for these callouts, simultaneously celebrating their victories and issuing challenges to other fighters, making sure to insult them in both.
Trash talk as sport
In the present day, the plethora of social media platforms available for emerging and accomplished fighters has made trash talk ubiquitous and interactive: everyone, from journalists to aficionados to the casual spectator, not only has the ability to watch these interactions as they unfold in real time, but they can also participate and add their own commentary as encouragement.
Memes, gifs, and clips capture and recycle viral moments, forever accessible in cyberspace. Imagine that: a record of the worst thing someone can say about you, available with a few keywords and a Google search. Now, what remains a constant requirement of trash talk—correction: of good trash talk—is creativity and wit. Its quality is another factor that can propel new talent to instant stardom because, done well, it sells.
What comes to mind when you think of the most memorable moments of trash talk in combat sports? One-liners, in particular, have made most of my own short list:
- Conor “Who the fook is that guy?” McGregor and Jeremy Stephens
- Dominick “You can’t be done talking to me; you’re right here facing me, dummy” Cruz and TJ Dillashaw
- Chael “You absolutely suck” Sonnen and Anderson Silva
- The Diaz Brothers… and, well, anybody on the receiving end of their trash talk.
Some of these go as far back as the early aughts, emblematic of the events themselves. I don’t remember the specific UFC event McGregor and Stephens were promoting during their interaction, but I do remember McGregor turning around to look at Stephens before facing the live audience and saying that line, his timing nothing short of perfect.
Of course, trash talk is not required of fighters; not everyone participates in it, and as Roxanne Modafferi says, not everyone has the right personality for it. If a fighter chooses to partake in it, they have to be self-assured, because another element to good trash talk returns to combat sports: being able to back up what you say when it comes to the day of the match. This doesn’t exactly mean a victory but it does mean bringing—and keeping—the same energy of the person who had spent months hurling insults at someone else.
The most satisfying outcomes of trash talk, interestingly, are on opposite ends of the spectrum: the trash talker is pummeled, punished for his hubris; the trash talker prevails, rewarded for his confidence. What isn’t satisfying is trash talk that feels forced—a fighter contorting himself into a persona he can’t quite live up to.
Blurring the lines
I would be remiss not to dedicate a section focused on the intensity that trash talk can sometimes reach in combat sports. Not “Who the fook is that guy” intensity—which, let’s be honest, only inserted levity in the press conference—but intensity that prompts discussions about trash talk within combat sports (or statements addressing it, such as the one released by Cormier). Physical brutality tends to be contained. But how to react when the foundation for a different type of trash talk emerges—when the monologue makes a turn for the worse, exchanging wit for cruelty?
In the early 1900s, racial tensions birthed the nickname, “Great White Hope.” Coined by writer Jack London, “Great White Hope” was used to describe boxer James Jeffries when he left retirement to fight Jack Johnson, the first African American World Heavyweight Champion of Boxing. Of the “Fight of the Century,” Jeffries said, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” Though the match will end with Johnson defeating Jeffries by TKO, the media would continue assigning this nickname to seven more boxers long after Jeffries, with at least one of them outright rejecting it.
Another “Fight of the Century” prompted another exchange several decades later: the current Heavyweight Champion Joe Frazier vs. the former Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali. The build-up was there: In 1967, Ali was stripped of his World Heavyweight Champion title after refusing to be inducted into the US Army, and for the next three years, he was banned from boxing. During that time, Frazier competed for, and won, the vacant NYSAC, WBA, WBC, and The Ring heavyweight titles.
With Ali’s license reinstatement and subsequent victory over Oscar Bonavena in late 1970, the two were set for a bout; that same year, Ali visited Frazier’s nephew’s school in Harlem, said that Frazier was “too ugly to be the World Heavyweight Champion,” and then called Frazier’s nephew to join him on stage. Ali was relentless in disparaging his opponent, dismissing him as an “Uncle Tom” who “[worked] for the enemy,” and a “tool of good-old-boy sherrifs and Ku Klux Klansmen.” By their third bout, Ali will have nicknamed Frazier “the Gorilla” for what is now one of his most recognizable rhymes: “It will be a killa and a thrilla and a chilla when I get the Gorilla in Manila.”
Two decades after Frazier and Ali’s “Fight of the Century,” Mike Tyson and Donovan Ruddock faced off for “The Fight of the Year” in 1991, a championship eliminator fight that would result in the winner fighting the current World Heavyweight Champion, Evander Holyfield. In an interview with Roy Firestone for ESPN’s Up Close, Tyson watched a pre-recorded promotion video of himself talking about Ruddock: “March 18th, Mike Tyson, Razor Ruddock. Razor Ruddock dies. If he doesn’t die, it doesn’t count. If he’s not dead, it doesn’t count.”
For “The Rematch,” which happened later three months after their first fight, they participated in a Fox Sports interview. In it, Tyson addresses Ruddock directly: “You should get up and kneel to me now, and I’ll spare you the night of the 28th… I don’t know why you talk to me like that when you know I’ll kill you for it… I can’t wait until the 28th. I’m gonna make you my girlfriend.”
In 2003, Booker T eliminated The Rock in a battle royal, becoming the number one contender for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. The WrestleMania XIX promotion that followed Booker T’s victory saw current Triple H, the current champion, walking towards his future opponent, Ric Flair in tow.
In the video, Triple H removes his sunglasses, enters the ring, looks Booker T up and down before beginning his spiel: “See, the fact is, Booker, somebody like you doesn’t get to be a world champion. See, people like you don’t deserve it; that’s reserved for people like me. See, Book, that’s where the confusion is… You’re not here to be a competitor. You’re here to be an entertainer. That’s what you do: you entertain people. Hell, you entertain me all the time… You know it. That’s your role. Your job is to make people like me laugh, and you’re very good at it, with your nappy hair and your ‘suckas.’”
We fast forward to 2017, in a press conference for Bellator 170: Ortiz vs. Sonnen. Tito Ortiz and Chael Sonnen had a rivalry that went back almost two decades, where Sonnen had defeated Ortiz in a wrestling match.
Ironically, Ortiz talked about how Sonnen’s “mouth has gotten [Sonnen] every big fight that he’s had,” referring, perhaps, to Sonnen’s ability in trash talk.
Sonnen’s response was ready before the camera even panned back to him: “Tito always says I’m using my mouth to get my opportunities. The only person I know that made money using their mouth is his ex-wife.”
Paul Daley, who sat to Sonnen’s left, gaped at him before turning to look at Ortiz’s reaction, which was out of the view. The audience had the same reaction, audibly “oohing” before Ortiz cut in.
And a year later, there was UFC 229, the events of which boiled over into a melee after the official match ended.
The lead-up to the fight between UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and former Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor includes a filmed confrontation between Nurmagomedov and McGregor’s then-teammate Artem Lobov, which prompted McGregor’s infamous April bus attack two days later, after a press conference for UFC 223.
Later in August, McGergor took aim at Nurmagomedov’s father, calling him a “quivering coward” in a now-deleted Instagram post, and two months later in October, during the press conference for UFC 229, McGregor addressed Nurmagomedov’s manager, Ali Abdelaziz, whom he called a “terrorist snitch.”
In that same press conference, McGregor, owner of Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey, offered a shot to Nurmagomedov, a practicing Muslim who abstains from alcohol. After Nurmagomedov declined the shot repeatedly, McGregor said, “You [must be] some buzz at parties, you mad backwards c—. You’re dead when I get my hands on you, do you hear me? You’re f—— dead.”
In what feels like a full-circle moment, Andscape writer, Khaled A. Beydoun, described McGregor’s role in the feud as the “great white hero” in his essay about the brawl.
The best possible outcome of a fight, particularly when it’s fueled by trash talk of this kind, is conflict resolution: a release of pent-up energy, followed up by a scene of both parties shaking hands and agreeing that it wasn’t personal.
The worst outcome? The bad blood festers, feeding into a long-lasting grudge.
There is no limit (?)
There have been occasions where trash talk has been denounced by fans, journalists, athletes, and even representatives of the fight promotion. But denunciation is not the same as punishment, which the Nevada Athletic Commission once considered after UFC 229—and which UFC President Dana White, in turn, criticized. Does this mean that there is, theoretically, no actual limit to trash talk in combat sports? Or is the only limit not trash talk at all, but action beyond the fighters themselves?
Trash talk has become so deeply intertwined with combat sports because the sport itself is so personal. A fighter’s job, after all, requires them to inflict violence on their opponent in order to win. In fact, it requires the fighter to push themself beyond their own physical and psychological limits—a personal endurance test through a perpetual cycle of training and dieting in a months-long camp away from their loved ones—all so that they can achieve the aforementioned goal.
In the cage, they isolate and manipulate limbs until they feels a tap—or until they hear a bone break. They raise her foot just as their opponent makes a dive for their legs: an opportune connection that knocks their opponent unconscious, stiffens them up. They stand opposite their rival, their own upper lip split to the cheek, their rival’s nose caved in. The fighter’s head throbs; their teeth rattle loose in their mouthguard. And still, the fighters move forward, continuing to participate in this all-out brawl, despite the excruciating pain—because this is what they do; this is what they’ve worked for.
“There is no suing in fighting,” Cormier says, shaking his head as he looks directly at the camera. “You’ve got to just go at them in a different way.”
What he must mean to say is, “Take it to court? No. Just take it to the cage.”