As his UFC on Fox co-feature bout with Daniel Cormier approaches, Frank Mir is launching into his usual routine about snapping limbs. The former UFC heavyweight champion’s talk isn’t all schtick, of course, as Tim Sylvia and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira can attest.
But if Mir is hoping to get into the head of the former Olympic wrestler and Strikeforce grand prix tournament champion, it doesn’t seem to be working. In a Tuesday media teleconference promoting the April 20 event in San Jose, Calif., Cormier shrugged off Mir’s mind games.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Cormier said. “I’m going to go out there and fight my fight and hoping its promotion, because if that’s the way his mind works, that’s disturbing.”
Cormier went on to explain that he’s not about to be goaded into fighting out of pure emotion.
“Well, you know, I’m not really big on fighting with emotion,” Cormier said. “I’m not going to fight with any emotion, there’s nothing Frank can say about me that’s going to make me fight a fight that’s more dangerous. I really don’t know, I’ve stated time and time again that there’s only a select few individuals who have taken the beatings Frank has taken and all this stuff and still continue to be the way he is.”
Cormier, of course, is a training partner and friend of the current UFC heavyweight champion, Cain Velasquez. Cormier has previously stated he’ll go down to light heavyweight in order to get a title shot if that’s what it takes, but he says as of now, thoughts of Jon Jones‘ gold are on hold.
“Well you know, I’ve got such an important fight on my hands with this next one that I really have kind of strayed away from that thought process,” Cormier said of a drop to light heavyweight. “I’m not really thinking the about the 205-pound weight class right now. I’ve stated time and time again that I want to be the UFC champion, if that means going a weight below, then I’ll do that, but I have the toughest fight of my career in two weeks in front of me.”