“It’s not 100 percent, I’m going to be honest. My fist is closing but not all the way.”
Daniel Cormier injured his hand against Stipe Miocic at UFC 226, and the former Olympian will not be ‘100 percent’ heading into his heavyweight title defense against Derrick Lewis in the UFC 230 main event.
Speaking to Luke Thomas on a recent edition of The MMA Hour, ‘DC’ revealed that he can’t make a closed fist in his right hand but insists that he’s in good enough shape to fight on Nov. 3.
“Man, I always wanted to compete, but I was hurt and I kinda set my sights on just waiting for Brock,” Cormier said, per MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al-Shatti. “Then the UFC called me and asked me. That’s generally how it goes, but this time they said, ‘Can you fight in a few weeks?’ And I was like, ‘Well, honestly, I’m not ready to fight right now, but I could see where I stand. I could see if there’s any chance that I could get in a fight.’ They said Derrick Lewis. I said, ‘Okay, let me go see if my hand will hold up when I punch something. If it does, then yeah, I’ll go fight.’
“It’s good enough to fight,” he continued. “It’s not 100 percent, I’m going to be honest. My fist is closing but not all the way. It feels like now I have like a badly jammed finger. Like, it feels like my finger’s just jammed really badly right now.”
Despite his hand injury, the reigning light heavyweight and heavyweight titleholder is still ‘going hard’ in the training room and is taking his preparation for Lewis very seriously.
“I can do a lot of things,” Cormier said. “Some sparring. I’m just not hitting as hard with my right hand. I can wrestle, but I’m just trying to be very careful. I’m kinda working around it, because if something’s going to happen, I prefer it to happen in the fight than in the training room. Because how horrible would be it be if I take this fight, three weeks until the fight, and then have to pull out a week later?
“I’m telling you, I’m going hard though. I’m hitting dudes. I’m punching dudes and trying to get ready to fight. I’m not going to cheat myself and go into this fight with Derrick — I have to be very prepared. The guy is a big, strong, tough guy who’s there to win the fight, so I have to be prepared to do everything in there.”
Speaking of the fight, Cormier is expecting ‘The Black Beast’ to come out strong and try to take his head off in the early rounds.
“I expect him to come hard, very fast, to try to knock me out,” Cormier said. “I think Derrick understands that he has to win this fight quickly, and his best course to victory is to come out there and try to get this fight finished quick, because over 25 minutes, no one’s shown the ability to go with me that long except for Jones. So, I don’t think that Derrick would see himself in that light, but he needs to go this done quick if he’s going to win this fight.”
UFC 230: Cormier vs. Lewis takes place next month, November 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.