UFC Hall of Famers Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen want to collide at the end of the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen are years removed from their MMA retirement fights. But ahead of their coaching clash on The Ultimate Fighter 33, Cormier and Sonnen have a solution to the end-of-season tradition of the opposing coaches competing against each other in the cage.
Cormier and Sonnen will return to the corners on TUF 33, which is set to debut later this year. Both Cormier and Sonnen have experience coaching on TUF in the past with Cormier most recently competing against Stipe Miocic on TUF 27.
Cormier and Sonnen recently got their rosters for TUF 33, and both legends will feature a prominent welterweight fighter on their coaching staff. Instead of a potential Cormier vs. Sonnen fight at season’s end, the two Hall of Famers came up with an interesting idea for the finale.
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Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen pitch a show-ending battle between assistant coaches
During the TUF 33 pre-show press conference, Cormier shared a creative idea for what should substitute for the traditional battle between head coaches at the end of the season.
“We aren’t fighting, I don’t want to fight anybody…but Chael and I came up with an idea,” Cormier explained. “So Chael and I are talking. I have Michael Chiesa on my coaching staff, Chael has Colby Covington on his coaching staff. Why don’t they just fight and Chael and I coach them? That’s about as close as we both would get to being in the Octagon.
“Why don’t those dudes just fight each other?”
Sonnen doubled down on Cormier’s assertion.
“To back Daniel up, I can’t believe nobody is suggesting that, that’s the obvious fight,” Sonnen said. “I don’t think Colby and Chiesa are going to get through this process without finding one another.”
Michael Chiesa called out Colby Covington after finishing Tony Ferguson at UFC Abu Dhabi last year. Covington returned to the cage in December, losing by TKO to Joaquin Buckley in the UFC Tampa headliner.
Michael Chiesa vs. Colby Covington?
Chiesa most recently submitted Max Griffin at UFC 310 in December. He’s won back-to-back fights since a three-fight losing streak signaled the final stretch of his career, including defeats to Kevin Holland and Vicente Luque.
Covington, like Chiesa, is also coming off some recent struggles in the cage, losing four of his last six fights. Before falling to Buckley, he lost to Leon Edwards in his third-career UFC lineal title shot at UFC 296.
Covington and Chiesa could potentially come to blows during their time coaching opposite one another on TUF 33. But for Cormier, he’d like to see the two welterweights build up a feud during the show’s filming that leads to an eventual UFC booking.
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