Cormier: I like Jones’ heel persona
Daniel Cormier: “I like his heel persona. But for me, it just tells me that he’s a bit uncomfortable because this is out of character for Jon Jones.”
Undefeated former Olympian Daniel Cormier appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour for a wide-ranging interview, ahead of his fight with UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones at UFC 178 on September 27.
Bickering on Twitter
Mixed martial arts is as real as it gets, but the pre fight trash talk often isn’t.
Although the bickering on Twitter between Cormier and Jones has been a little silly, and led to the latest Jon Jones Tweet N Delete, it is genuinely real.
“I said time and time again that I didn’t believe [Jones] should try and protect this image that doesn’t even exist anymore,” Cormier said as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMAFighting. “That image that he put out when he started fighting before, that’s gone. People saw through that. People know that he’s not this person that he put off he was in the beginning of his career because of all the things he’s had to deal with just in the media. He’s had to grow up a lot faster than most people did in this sport because he’s so good.
“I like his heel persona. But for me, it just tells me that he’s a bit uncomfortable because this is out of character for Jon Jones. He doesn’t directly go at his opponents like he has with me. This is out of character a little bit.
“I’m not in his mind or under his skin. But I know that he knows that he has a real fight ahead of him September 27th, so maybe he’s trying to use mind tricks on me to affect me. But, I mean, oh my goodness that is just so petty and childish. He can’t use mind games on me. I’ve deal with all this stuff for so long in my life that mind tricks don’t work. They won’t. They won’t ever work.”
Whatever happened to the knee surgery?
“You know what it really was, just, I’m not big on surgery,” said Cormier. “I’ve had a ton of them. I broke my thumb playing football and I broke my arm wrestling. I broke my hand fighting, I had to take out my appendix, I had to fix my collar bone when I was a kid. So I’ve had a lot of surgeries, and it seems as though, as medicine has improved, surgeries, they don’t always work, which is crazy.
“When I got the surgeries back in the 80’s, I never had to go back because my surgery didn’t take. You didn’t see stuff like King Mo’s staph infection or, I got another friend, his name is Wayne, he’s going back to re-fix his ACL again because it didn’t heal the correct way, or Dominick Cruz, where he kept injuring himself after the thing was supposed to be fixed. So I’m not real big on surgery right now.”
The final decision to forgo surgery was made when Cormier successfully wrestled his final match, vs. two-time NCAA champion Chris Pendleton at the UFC Fan Expo in July.
Will Jones attack the knee?
“If he didn’t (use it), I’d be very disappointed in him,” said Jones. “As a competitor, I’d be very disappointed in Jon Jones if he didn’t. But as a competitor, he’s had injuries too that I need to target, and I’m going to.
“If we’re in the clinch and I’m not foot-stomping his toe, then I’m not giving myself the best chance to win this fight. If there is a known injury, we should try and win at all costs. I mean, I thought it was great that he wrenched on Glover Teixeira’s arm when he had the opportunity because that shows you that he’s vicious enough to try and win at all costs, and now he’s in the cage with someone who’s willing to do the same exact thing.”