Daniel Cormier doesn’t have anything left to prove in MMA, but that doesn’t mean the UFC Hall of Famer is totally ruling out one last fight before he hang up his gloves for good.
“I said this when I retired, I said I’m only going to fight for championship belts,” Cormier said Friday in a Twitter Q&A with Monster Energy. “But it’s like, I don’t deserve a heavyweight championship fight. Stipe [Miocic] is not the champ. He beat me the last couple times. I don’t deserve a shot at the heavyweight title. If I was ever going to fight again — and which, I don’t want to — I would have to go all the way back to 205 pounds.
“Why? Let me tell you why. Because I didn’t lose. Remember, I vacated the title whenever I didn’t want to go back down there, when [Jon] Jones was going to fight [Alexander] Gustafsson. So because I vacated the title, now maybe there is some potential in, ‘Hey Dana [White], you think I could fight Jiri Prochazka for the title?’ Especially with your name recognition and what you’ve become outside of the fight game, maybe there’s some value in that.”
Cormier, 43, reigned over the light heavyweight division as UFC champion from 2015-18, defending his title three times before vaulting up to the heavyweight division and becoming just one of four fighters in UFC history to hold two belts simultaneously. Cormier ultimately walked away from MMA in August 2020 following back-to-back losses to Stipe Miocic.
Cormier hasn’t competed at 205 pounds since January 2018, when he vanquished Volkan Oezdemir to defend his light heavyweight championship at UFC 220. But if the opportunity ever arose for “DC” to mount a comeback fight to recapture one of his old titles, he knows a move back down to light heavyweight would be the only fair route to take, if only because he never actually lost his 205-pound belt in the cage.
“I don’t want to, but I would have to,” Cormier said. “I mean, if I had the desire to fight and I wanted to try to accomplish something great one more time, then it would require [going back down to light heavyweight], because there just is no title fight at heavyweight.
“I don’t deserve a title fight at heavyweight.”
Of course, Cormier is also well aware of his ticking clock to be able to achieve such a feat.
“If it ever happens, it better happen soon,” he said. “I’m 44 years old in March. But hey, Randy Couture won the heavyweight championship at 45, so it’s not impossible.”
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