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UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier told ESPN on Monday that it was not necessary to face Jon Jones for the third time before retiring.
Cormier, who defeated Derrick Lewis on Saturday at UFC 230 to retain his heavyweight belt, said he wanted to end his MMA career before he was 40. years. He will have that age in March and hopes his latest opponent will be WWE superstar Brock Lesnar.
"I do not need it [the Jones fight] more, "said Cormier on Ariel Helwani's MMA Show. Sometimes you need things and sometimes you do not have them. … I came to accept everything. As he was so gone, I had to pull out of the situation so completely that it was almost not a reality. "
Cormier and Jones have one of the biggest rivalries in the history of MMA.
Jones had already defeated Cormier twice before (one of them having been turned into a no-contest), the first unanimous decision at UFC 182 in 2015. Jones was later stripped to the belt after being arrested as a result of an accident causing injury to a pregnant woman Cormier replaced Jones and beat Anthony Johnson for the interim belt.
Jones and Cormier had to fight at the UFC 200 in July 2016, but Jones failed a drug test before the check and was removed from the card. The two men finally played UFC 214 in July 2017. Jones got a header in the third round and was won by TKO, although the result was declared dead after Jones tested positive for Turinabol , an anabolic steroid. Cormier was reinstated in the light heavyweight category and defeated Volkan Oezdemir by TKO in the second round in January.
Similarly, Jones told Helwani last month that he no longer wanted to fight Cormier.
"I already have all the balls when it's Daniel Cormier," Jones said. "I've beaten it twice.This game has never been personal.What is personal, is to look for greatness, not individuals.So, in the case of Daniel Cormier and of myself he has to fight once again if he wishes to be considered one of the greatest of all time.I do not need to fight him again to be considered one of the greatest of all time.I still have many years to prove it. "
Jones should play UFC 232 against Alexander Gustafsson on December 29 in Las Vegas. The fight is a rematch of what some consider to be the greatest fight of all time: a 2013 clash that saw Jones win the victory unanimously and keep his heavyweight belt.
Cormier thinks he is in discussion for the best fighter of all time. His only official job loss was that of Jones, who, according to Cormier, used banned substances to win. After years spent thinking that he would need to defeat Jones for his own legacy, Cormier appears over this idea and is happy to retire without completing the trilogy.
"Can I really believe that he will be back in the game?" Cormier asked. "History shows that there will probably be a problem before Gustafsson's fight or after Gustafsson's fight, we're planning a fight, there's definitely going to be a problem, because there've always been some." "
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