Daniel Cormier Hasn’t Watched His UFC 214 Loss to Jon Jones

Daniel Cormier appeared on the MMA Hour and discussed his loss to Jon Jones at UFC 214. Highlights are below:

On not having watched the fight yet: “Right now, so far, I’m still kind of playing the guessing game, as to how the fight was going and how everything played out. Because I asked people around me, like my coaches and my friends, they’ll talk to me about the fight, and from what everybody tells me, I think watching the fight would probably do more harm than good, because they were saying that we were fighting pretty even up until the kick, and I think it would maybe disappoint me.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for that emotionally yet, to watch that, especially if they are telling me the truth in regards to how the fight was going. And it was such a simple mistake, and I think that’s why it sucks. Because I don’t miss head kicks like that, and it’s not like it was a head kick off a punch combination or anything like that. You watch Donald Cerrone when he lands that beautiful combination on Rick Story, you can see how the head kick would land. But with this one, it just seemed like he was trying to keep me off of him. It was kind of like a kick to keep me back, and I missed it and it just caught me there on the right spot.”

On Joe Rogan interviewing him after the fight: “I don’t hold any ill will towards [Rogan]. I think he was doing his job. I don’t hold any ill will towards John McCarthy either. John McCarthy gave me plenty of opportunities to stay in this fight. I couldn’t. The Joe Rogan interview, I don’t even know what happened. I still haven’t seen it, and honestly — man, I’ll be honest with you, I’m still missing time. Like, I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember leaving the Octagon. Some of these photos where I was crying and I was hugging Bob (Cook), I don’t remember any of that. I remember being in the back — I feel like I came out of a fog. Like, I remember when I was in the back, they said ‘you have to go to the hospital.’ I’m like, for what? I just am still missing time. I’m missing probably, I don’t know, 10 minutes. I talked to Dana (White) and I said, ‘I’m sorry if I pushed you,’ because I remember they said I pushed somebody.

“I do the TV stuff, so obviously I’ve got friends in TV, and they said that as they were watching in the Octagon, they could hear the microphone on Bob Cook, and I was asking questions, asking what happened, asking why Dana yelled at me,” Cormier continued. “Then they said I was there and I was kinda tearing up, then they said that I looked up at the replay and that’s when I really broke down, because I guess I saw what happened. But I still, I don’t recall that. But again, tears and sadness mean that it means something to you, and I would do the same thing again.”

On Jones’ left-leg kick during the fight: “Honestly, [the KO] happened, but at the end I’m not exactly sure that really kinda relates, because I was talking about before. I used to really dip into kicks. Like, I would literally always take my head off to the side to evade punches. With ‘Rumble,’ when I broke my nose, I literally put my face right into the kick, and man, he tried to kick me again and I dipped my head back to that side again and he missed. With this one, I didn’t dip. I had trained, I thought I had shored up that area, so I was standing straight up when I got kicked. Now, I think the key to the sequence was that he had kicked me and tried to knee me and stuff in the body a lot, and the time that I got kicked, I was anticipating a body kick, so I went to block the body and the kick went high. But again, it was just me going forward, trying to pressure, and the kick got up fast. He really kicked up there fast, and I didn’t guess right.”

On Jones’ post-fight behavior: “I haven’t really paid much attention to [Jones]. I’ve been really focusing on myself and just my family. I don’t know what’s going to become of Jon Jones or what happens in the future, but for me personally, I just kind of want to just live my life. I’m not going to really address anything that happened with him and I right now. It’s a mute point, but to think that all the bad things that have been said, all of the negative comments towards each other could just be completely gone, would be unrealistic. But, in terms of coexisting in this sport, we have to. How can I not see or be around Jon Jones when my jobs are so closely tied to the UFC?

“So in that sense I will be a professional. But outside of that, I don’t really know. I thought we fought a good fight. I thought we were both fighting at the highest level of mixed martial arts, and a good strike landed that ended the fight. I’ve always respected him in that sense though. I’ve never once questioned the type of competitor that he is, he’s a fantastic competitor, and I just hope that at this point, now that he has the belt back, and he’s the UFC champion again, and the limelight will be brighter than ever, that he can handle it. I really do wish him the best in that sense.”