UFC: Fate finally favours Daniel Cormier who has a chance to consign Jon Jones to history
Friday 6 July 2018 06:06, UK
I wonder if Daniel Cormier believes in fate. It has certainly not been kind to him, writes James Dielhenn, yet suddenly a legacy is within his grasp that should have already belonged to his enemy, Jon Jones. The irony…
The tears that flowed down Cormier's cheeks and the welling up of his face last summer meant we should never have reached this collective point. It was Jones, twice his conqueror and yet to find his equal, who should stand on the verge of two-belt history.
Adding UFC heavyweight gold to his light-heavyweight reign, the best run of victories that MMA has ever seen, seemed the only logical challenge for Jones who had vanquished two generations of contenders in the sport's marquee division, culminating in Cormier last year. That rematch result drew a line in the sand for Jones, and acted as redemption for a torrid few years where he had spent more memorable time in prison cages than UFC cages. It didn't last. It couldn't.
A second positive drug test, taken 24 hours before he beat arch-rival Cormier for a second time and reduced him to crying, rendered Jones' cathartic victory as tainted. The result was overturned to a no-contest, the world title was stripped from Jones' waist and wrapped around Cormier, but they were superficial punishments. Cormier knew the reality that, in two attempts, he had lost to Jones. This weekend Cormier, the reigning light-heavyweight champion, challenges Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title but the truth is that he is fighting to erase his inferiority to Jones.
What better way to one-up his foe, who remains an irrelevance in the wilderness of suspension, than to complete a historic achievement that Jones has for years eyed for himself?
"I do want to challenge for the heavyweight title," Jones told the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2016, after one win against Cormier and one failed drug test that scuppered a rematch. "I've beaten up a lot of heavyweights, man. Only people who train at [his New Mexico gym] have seen that. I've picked up a lot of heavyweights. I've slammed a lot of heavyweights.
"I know that I'm capable. I just want to make sure I compete against the right stylistic matchup for me when I go to heavyweight and challenge for that title."
Justice hasn't been in Cormier's hands, until now. A third fight together, considering the asterisk that now exists, can't happen because Jones is suspended and time will not wait for 39-year-old Cormier. The opportunity to land a mythical second belt that Jones has long teased as his own destiny is perhaps the only way Cormier can exact revenge.
Their legacies shouldn't intertwine but, unfortunately for perennial nice guy Cormier, fight sports are not a kind place and fighters are rarely remembered as they deserve to be.
Cormier, alongside Georges St-Pierre, has an outstanding case to call himself the best MMA fighter ever who has never failed a drug test. An Olympian in 2004, his MMA career began aged 30 and in 22 fights his only losses are to Jones. There is a question mark over his legitimacy as champion because he never took it from Jones, but not with Cormier's résumé - he twice submitted the division's boogeyman Anthony 'Rumble' Johnson, beat the consensus No 3 challenger Alexander Gustafsson, and dominated legends Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva.
Crucially for this weekend's return to heavyweight, he strung together a 13-0 record before moving down a division that included wins over the far more experienced Josh Barnett and Frank Mir.
Cormier believes a landscape without the shamed Jones makes him the de facto greatest.
"I think I am. I don't believe that anything else should be thought of. I should be in the conversation," he said this week. "Anytime a guy does performance-enhancing drugs and on multiple occasions they eliminate themselves. When you have negative tied to your name they deny you the ultimate vindication."
Jones' charge sheet is long - he tested positive for cocaine dating back to a month before he first beat Cormier, he was stripped of his title in a hit-and-run car incident, he was withdrawn at a few days' notice from his mammoth UFC 200 rematch with Cormier after testing positive for a banned substance for the first time. Jones blamed that on a tainted sex pill and was stripped of the title again. Finally they fought again last summer but, after a stoppage win, Jones failed his second drug test and was stripped for a third time.
The Jones-Cormier rivalry is ugly and spiteful - four years ago they brawled disgracefully at a press conference, last week they exchanged horrible online messages.
"Why would a scumbag like that have any limits?" Cormier asked.
All this makes it difficult to remember that Jones, indiscretions notwithstanding, is the best fighter ever seen in the UFC Octagon. The only blemishes on his record are a disqualification and a no-contest when, in reality, he won both of those fights. His stunning victories, although fading in memory, cannot be overwritten but he has allowed rivals, not least Cormier, to challenge his status as the sport's king with less disputed achievements.
In Cormier's way is Miocic, a firefighter on his own trajectory to becoming MMA's best ever heavyweight. Nothing for Cormier has ever been easy.
The son of a murdered father and the victim of tragedy when losing a daughter to a traffic accident, Cormier will remember Jones' last public appearance when he smugly vowed to challenge Brock Lesnar in a money-spinning heavyweight occasion.
It never happened and probably never will, now, so Cormier can overtake his rival's greatness by beating him to a milestone achievement that has no precedence.
