What will be remembered of Daniel Cormier when he finally hangs up his gloves?
Well, he’s the elite of the elite, with a mixed martial arts career boasting titles in every promotion he has competed in.
He’s the only man to have held the UFC light-heavyweight and heavyweight titles concurrently.
He was the US men’s freestyle wrestling champion from 2003-2008.
Even in the early knockings of his MMA career, Cormier won titles in Strikeforce, King of the Cage and Xtreme MMA.
But despite all these successes, he is still seen as the nearly man. The guy who comes second.
The guy who couldn’t win an Olympic gold. The man a step down on the podium at the world championships.
The second best in the NCAA when competing in college. The man who could not beat Jon Jones at 205lbs – regardless of the circumstances.
He goes into this weekend’s rubber match with Stipe Miocic at UFC 252 with a legacy at stake – a seemingly absurd statement for someone with such a resume.
Much of this comes down to his rivalry with Jones. With genuine bad blood between their pair, Cormier lost both fights against the polarising American who failed a drug test, eventually rending the second bout a no contest.
The tearful in-Octagon interview with Joe Rogan following that second bout was as heart wrenching as it gets as the American Top Team product admitted if he couldn’t get a win, there was no rivalry between the pair. Absolute defeat against his greatest foe, admitted in the most public of arenas.
That was back in 2017, fast forward a year and those tears had been replaced with tears of joy as he took less than a round to knock Miocic off his throne in the heavyweight division.
Many consider Miocic the best heavyweight we have seen in the Octagon.
Thirteen wins across his eight-and-a-half year tenure in MMA’s premier promotion lay testament to that, as does his list of victims. Andrei Arlovski, Fabricio Werdum, and Junior dos Santos are all former champions, Francis Ngannou held the title of scariest man on the plant when Miocic defused him like a bomb expert, and then came the Cormier rematch in August last year.
A near 20-minute battle that Miocic ended on the feet, with the accurate, fight ending, striking synonymous of his career.
Which brings us to this weekend in Las Vegas, and why there is so much more than a title on the line for Cormier.
In Miocic, Cormier has the opportunity to beat the very best. Not just the current champion, but the man widely regarded as the best of his generation, if not all time.
If a 41-year-old Cormier can win, he can justifiably lay claim to those titles himself and once and for all shed the nearly-man moniker that haunts him.
UFC 252 takes place in the early hours of Sunday morning UAE time, you can catch all the action on UFC Arabia.
