Former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier recently revealed that he tested positive for COVID-19 during his training camp in preparation to face Stipe Miocic at UFC 252.
Cormier had already been preparing for the Aug. 15 bout when one of his American Kickboxing Academy teammates tested positive for COVID-19 on July 1, according to comments Cormier made in an interview with MMAWeekly.com content partner Yahoo! Sports.
By July 3, Cormier, his coach, and other training partners had all returned negative results for COVID-19.
“But over the weekend, I started feeling a little sick,” Cormier told Yahoo’s Kevin Iole. “I wasn’t sick, but I got a little tired and peaked. Monday comes, I go to practice and I spar and I worked out three times. I felt okay, but I was a little bit tired is, I guess, how I would put it.”
The thing that really tipped Cormier off was a device called a smart ring from Oura Health. The Oura Ring is one of the only mainstream consumer health wearables that measures body temperature directly from your skin rather than estimating it from your external environment. The UFC on Tuesday announced a partnership with Oura Health to provide Oura Rings and health management services to UFC fighters and staff.
The ring and Oura’s management services helped tip Cormier off to something more than just being tired being wrong. This was on July 8.
Cormier then got tested again and was found to be positive for COVID-19. Catching it right away, he had enough time to recover and still make it to the fight in August.
“The ring didn’t tell me I had COVID,” Cormier said. “But the ring told me that something wasn’t right, and I used the information to make a decision to go see the doctor. I found out then that I had COVID, but the information I got from the ring allowed me to make the fight.”
Cormier, of course, lost the bout to Miocic via a unanimous decision. He doesn’t mention that he had COVID-19 as an excuse for why he lost, but as an endorsement of the technology that the UFC is now utilizing company-wide to help fighters and staff maintain their health.
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Daniel Cormier had COVID-19 while training for Stipe Miocic UFC 252 bout
