Hawes Apologizes To ‘DC’ Over Aggro Post-Fight ‘Miscommunication’

Referee Herb Dean had to get between Phil Hawes and Daniel Cormier following Hawes’ win over Deron Winn. Here’s what Hawes said about the altercation.

Phil Hawes bounced back from a KO loss in his last fight to absolutely wreck Deron Winn at UFC Austin, hitting his opponent with everything but the kitchen sink en route to a TKO stoppage via step-in elbows (watch the highlights here). It was a violent performance, and it seems Hawes had a hard time switching off the aggression following the fight because he pointed it at post-fight interviewer Daniel Cormier.

Video from online streams of the event without commercials show Hawes yelling at “DC,” telling him “You picked the wrong pony! Yeah, you dog. You know what I’m talking about. I’ll cool off and then next week you can fight me.”

“I don’t pick fights,” a confused and annoyed Cormier replied. “Be respectful. You didn’t beat me. I don’t pick fights.”

Hawes seemed to be assuming Cormier was biased towards Deron Winn since the two are teammates at AKA. Cormier has been getting attacked for his booth work from all angles lately, be it because of his confusion towards judging criteria or fighters thinking his commentary is biased. Recently he decided to take a Joe Rogan approach to all the criticism.

“He just doesn’t care,” Cormier told MMA Junkie recently. “He just does not care because the reality is it does not matter. You’re put in a position to do a job that is very, very difficult and very few people in the world can do it, so you do it to the best of your ability.

Funny enough, “DC” mentioned Deron Winn as someone who’s also called him out over his commentary.

“I don’t watch this with a bias,” Cormier added. “If my teammates are fighting, I hope that they win. But unfortunately when that happens, I tend to go the opposite way … Deron Winn when he’s fighting he’s like ‘Dude.’ It’s hard because you’re a human being. That’s why at a point I can sympathize with the referees and the judges because they’re human beings.”

To his credit, Hawes sincerely apologized to Daniel Cormier during the post-fight press conference.

“Yeah, it was just a misunderstanding on my behalf,” Hawes said. “‘DC’ is such a role model to me. Two-weight world champion, just a friggin’ stellar dude. So there was a little miscommunication and wrong place, wrong time. I apologize, ‘DC.’ Don’t beat me up.”