Daniel Cormier is—and I know this is the greatest cliché—human.
Some fans’ unwarranted critical opinions on a fighter’s worth, his and others, must get to him. After all, with or without his sterling international wrestling and MMA accomplishments, he is only…human.
Just like you and me. (Sniff-sniff.)
Nevertheless, the human being and undefeated heavyweight fighter has his feet and perspective on the ground, with regard to the criticisms and vitriol spewed by the MMA malcontents among us.
The elite wrestler casually shoots his feelings toward the hard-to-please cognoscenti of the MMA fandom. He smoothly assumes a laid-back approach when it comes to romancing the stones of the species.
Listen to Cormier in the embedded The Ultimate Show video interview, along with his opponent Josh Barnett for the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix Championship finals on May 19, 2012. With lighthearted humor and a perceptible tinge of frustration, he says,
The UFC guys, they wouldn’t say stuff like, ‘You guys are terrible!’ […]
It’s the fans, always like, ‘You’re not fighting the best guys in the world.’ It’s not anybody from the UFC saying we’re not fighting the best in the world. […]
Ok, I just beat that dude, and 10 fans [go] like, ‘He’s a can.’ (Laughter breaks out.) And I’m like, ‘Damn, is that dude really bad?!’…They start to convince me that I’m fighting terrible people. (More laughter.)
It’s always refreshing to see two fighters who will be facing each other in the ring engage verbally with class and sportsmanship. Must be the calm before the storm that will rage inside the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California on the 19th of May.
Well, fans of any sport have always been a heterogeneous lot. You just have to take the good along with the bad.
Ever since the first Neanderthal bad boys wrestled away the mates and scant belongings of their weaker counterparts, before fighting was even a sport, there have always been snooty spectators on stone bleachers with stronger and contrary opinions.
Though, they were slightly less articulate than their modern counterparts.
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