Somehow for Daniel Cormier, that destroyer of worlds, Anthony Johnson, was just a thing he had to get through, twice. Like a turnstile or a toll station, on the way to a far-off destination.
And now the DC tour bus rolls on. Next stop: Jon Jones.
It’s what Cormier wants and needs, and if all goes well over the next few months (and given Jones’ recent history, that’s a big “if”), the rematch becomes inevitable, and Cormier gets the chance to truly claim the belt that is already his.
Until now, he has remained in Jones’ shadow.
Even on Saturday night, the presence of the 6’4″ former champion loomed over the night’s proceedings. Jones, who is from Rochester, New York, just over an hour’s drive away, made the trip and watched from cageside, glaring at Cormier in the wake of his second-round rear-naked choke victory.
“Is that guy even eligible to fight yet?” Cormier said on the pay-per-view broadcast moments after winning. “Don’t talk to me about a guy that’s ineligible. When you get your s–t together and you’re ready to fight, I’m here waiting for you, young man. I’ve been waiting two years. You got the first one, but you knew after the first one, we had many coming. As a fighter, I respect him, but we don’t see eye to eye. He’s a good fighter, but he’s still not eligible. When he gets his academics in order, he can come back to the classroom.”
While Cormier did his best to portray that he’s the man running the division, the reality is that soon enough, it will be filtered through Jones.
It has to.
Cormier, you may remember, won the championship in the absence of Jones, after the former belt-holder was stripped in the aftermath of an April 2015 hit-and-run that Jones pleaded guilty to.
Despite beating Johnson and Alexander Gustafsson with the belt on the line (and Anderson Silva in a non-title fight), Cormier has never quite been able to win the full respect of audiences who simply can’t erase all of Jones’ brilliance from their minds, let alone the result of the first fight between them, which Jones won by a lopsided unanimous decision.
And for Cormier, therein lies the rub. Despite his amateur excellence, despite his outstanding 19-1 MMA record, his loss to Jones seems to trump all of that, or at least stand out as the most significant result.
It’s not enough to point to his accomplishments and accolades. It’s not sufficient to point to the gold around his waist. He has to erase the one blight on his record; he must beat the man who has never truly been defeated.
Is this fair? Is this right?
No, not really.
Cormier has only played the hands he’s been dealt. He’s welcomed a rematch with Jones and was set to fight him again twice, only to see extenuating circumstances scuttle both pairings.
Jones’ absence for the last year is completely out of his control.
All Cormier can do is fight the best available opponent and continue winning.
When he begs Jones to “get your s–t together,” it’s for a reason. At 38 years old, time is running out.
Finally, things seem to be lining up again for him, even if Jones doesn’t feel as compelled by the bout as some others do.
“I really don’t feel like I have unfinished business with Cormier,” Jones said during a recent media press conference (h/t The Fight Network). “I think I have unfinished business with Anthony Johnson. We’ve had quite a few fights that fell through, but Daniel Cormier, I beat him fair and square. I’m the only guy to ever beat him. So if anyone has unfinished business, I feel he has unfinished business with me.”
Yet that isn’t completely believable. For Jones, there is nothing else and no one else to look forward to once he meets all the conditions to become eligible. Johnson would have been a compelling opponent, but after losing to Cormier on Saturday, Johnson surprisingly announced his retirement, saying he’d decided before the bout that this would be his final time competing.
That declaration was only slightly more surprising than his game plan against Cormier, which consisted largely of clinches and wrestling, two tactics that most observers would have suggested would favor Cormier, a two-time freestyle Olympian.
Instead of focusing on taking advantage of his significant power edge through distance control, Johnson breached the gap between them multiple times, essentially throwing himself into the spider’s web.
“I think Anthony has done so well at knocking people out that when it doesn‘t go his way he panics,” Cormier said on the UFC on FS1 post-fight show. “At the end of day, he’s a wrestler. He goes back to what he knows.”
Even the finishing sequence stemmed from Johnson’s misplays. Early in the second, Johnson managed a takedown, but Cormier got to his feet in a blink and locked in tight, tripped the challenger to the ground and quickly got to Johnson’s back. After a series of short punches, he sunk in the choke for the finish.
In doing so, Cormier proved again that he was the best of the eligible lot; that he remains right on Jones’ heels as the best light heavyweight of the last decade.
But to surpass him, to emerge from that towering shadow, there is only one path there, and that’s beating him.
Cormier can pretend he doesn’t want to hear Jones’ name and that Jones isn’t worthy of stepping back into the same spot he left behind, but the two giants are back on course, and the collision is unavoidable.
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