Daniel Cormier is done being disrespected.
In the unlikeliest of social media rivalries between fighters, the former two-division Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) titleholder has caught some backlash from Nate Diaz. The news of UFC 306 recently announced the event to take place in The Sphere in Las Vegas for the promotion’s second celebration of Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 14, 2024. Therefore, Cormier has already begun to speculate what fights we could see at the historic card.
Diaz, a free agent at present, teased his interest in a return to the Octagon at UFC 306, which Cormier was fine with when discussing the topic on his YouTube channel. However, he just doesn’t want to see Diaz in the main event. That upset Diaz as he tweeted in response: “This b—ch is not a fighter. Complete opposite. Good talk, DC.”
As Dee Snider famously first said in 1984, Cormier is not gonna take it.
“First off, I have no problem with Nate Diaz,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel (h/t MMA Fighting). “I have no issue. I don’t really know Nate. I’ve always respected Nate for what he did inside the Octagon.
“I’m a lot of things, guys, but one thing I’m not is nobody’s b—ch. I’m not a b—ch,” he continued. “So my question is this: When did it become okay for men to start calling each other outside their name like that? When did that become okay? I don’t disrespect nobody in my assessment of them. I try my best to be as fair as I can. I don’t quite understand why people think it’s okay to attack you in that way, especially calling you outside your name like that. It’s not cool, man. You don’t get to just talk to people any way you want.”
This isn’t Cormier’s first beef since retiring. The once-Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight champion finds it odd to have these reoccurences but believes it could be attributed to the fact that he is no longer active as a competitor.
Ultimately, Cormier doesn’t see how Diaz can jab at him the way he has. When you look at each career, Cormier laid out the levels of mixed martial arts (MMA).
“To say I’m not a fighter — I don’t get it,” Cormier said. “Again, I feel like actually, I was pretty fair to this dude. Because when you really think about it, to say I’m not a fighter, when you really think about it — Nate Diaz was fun, Nate Diaz got a championship opportunity. But if I’m not a fighter, what’s that make him? What does that make him? If I did what I did and he did what he did, what’s that make him?
“One time I was talking to Khabib [Nurmagomedov] when Nate was coming at Khabib, and Khabib said something to the effect of, ‘This man has lost 12 or 13 fights in his career. Daniel, I can’t respond to this guy. I can’t take this guy serious because who loses to that many people?’” he continued. “How can you call me not a fighter when you have had those instances? What did I do? I fought the best. I fought the best in the world constantly. So to say I’m not a fighter because I have an opinion on whether or not I want to see him headline The Sphere?
“The reality is, one thing we will not do is compare myself to Nate Diaz, because it’s different levels,” Cormier concluded. “Much different. I’m a champion. Two weight classes. I lost three times in my career. Four if you count the fight that was called a no-contest. Four times, two guys. We are on much different wavelengths, we are on much different planets. We are not in the same stratosphere in terms of fighters. We’re not. And it’s time for me to stop allowing people to attack or come at me in these ways when I’m doing my job.”