Daniel Cormier didn’t have his first professional mixed martial arts fight until he was 30.
Oh sure, he had a world-class athletic career before MMA, which was his second love. Cormier represented Team USA in freestyle wrestling at the 2004 Olympic Games before he even gave fighting a thought. And yes, wrestling is one of MMA’s most important foundations, so Cormier’s credentials helped him transition from the jump.
But it takes years to figure out how to properly mix the martial arts, and from that perspective, what DC accomplished in 11 blindingly fast years was nothing short of remarkable.
The 41-year-old Cormier formalized his retirement Saturday night following his unanimous decision loss to Stipe Miocic in their trilogy at UFC 252 from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Miocic retained the heavyweight title that he lost to DC the first time around then regained in their second matchup.
Your average fighter topically starts training as a teenager and has their first fight not all that long after becoming an adult. Someone breaking in during their mid-20s is considered a late starter. Most fighters will tell you it takes about 10 fights to feel truly comfortable in the cage, which puts most into their third or fourth year before they even reach that level.
Remember all this as you ponder what Cormier accomplished.
He was just two years into his career when he had his first head-turning moment, a knockout of Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva coming into the Strikeforce Grand Prix tournament semifinals as an alternate. Josh Barnett already had 15 years and 36 fights worth of experience when Cormier rag-dolled him in the tournament finals, which, incidentally, was Cormier’s 10th fight.
Cormier won the UFC light heavyweight championship at age 36 against Anthony Johnson, who had been fighting since age 18. He was 39 when he knocked out Miocic in their first matchup to claim the heavyweight championship and become what, at the time, was just the second simultaneous two-division champion in UFC history.
Cormier’s accomplishments with the clock ticking in winning two major championships and one of the most memorable tournaments in the sport’s history puts him in the pantheon of the sport’s greats.
But the results are only part of Cormier’s story. How DC handled himself along the way in a ruthless and often dirty game is every bit as important.
While Cormier was on his way up, Cain Velasquez was either UFC heavyweight champion or the top contender. They were best friends and training partners at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose. They appeared to be on precisely the sort of collision course, which, in the worst scenarios, has ripped gyms apart and turned friends into enemies.
Not Cormier. He decided to go down to light heavyweight, making his 205-pound debut a few weeks shy of his 35th birthday, so as not to damage his friendship with Velasquez. Sure, sometimes DC looked like death warmed over on the scale, but he truly became a star at 205, thanks in large part to his rivalry with Jon Jones.
Jones got the best of Cormier in the cage, sure. But Jones got into one problem after another, both of the regulatory type inside the sport and the legal type outside, while Cormier kept his nose clean the entire time and never had so much as a whiff of a scandal.
Thus it felt like justice when Jones found himself sidelined, and Cormier went on his big run, defeating Johnson for the vacant light heavyweight belt at UFC 187 and winning an all-time war with Alexander Gustafsson to keep the belt at UFC 192.
And it truly felt like karma bounced back around for Cormier when, after injuries put Velasquez out of the heavyweight title picture, things opened up for Cormier to challenge Miocic for the 265-pound belt, creating an electrifying moment when DC scored a first-round knockout at UFC 226.
But this is where we bump back into the first point of this piece: that Cormier started at a late age.
This wasn’t Conor McGregor becoming champ-champ at age 28. Cormier was north of 40 when he and Miocic rematched. DC threw everything but the kitchen sink at Miocic the second time out but couldn’t finish him. In Saturday’s rematch, going against an opponent who looked to be the fittest he’s ever been, Cormier hung in there, but the pair of 49-46 cards accurately reflect how the fight went.
It wasn’t a fairy tale ending, nor was it a sad conclusion. Cormier is walking away at exactly the right time: still competitive against the greatest heavyweight in MMA history, calling it a day before he becomes the latest cautionary tale of a fighter who held on too long, with the memories of his greatest accomplishments still fresh.
Cormier packed more into his abbreviated window than most fighters can dream of achieving. He’s an outstanding television commentator and just might have the right personality to assume the role as UFC president one day, should Dana White ever decide it’s time to call it a day.
Daniel Cormier doesn’t walk away with greatest of all time status. But we’ve never seen a fighter quite like him before and likely never will again. And that’s a hell of a legacy to have.
Daniel Cormier's mixed martial arts greatness was one of a kind | Opinion
