‘I cemented my place in MMA history’

NEW YORK – Daniel Cormier is now in a rather unique, enviable position: He’s simultaneously holding two UFC belts – a feat that only a single fighter, Conor McGregor, had pulled off before.

There is a chance, though, that the champ-champ could end the year without a single title. After all, when ex-champ Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson meet on Dec. 29, it’s the 205-pound belt that Cormier holds that will be on the line. And before that, on Saturday, it’s up to Cormier to defend the heavyweight crown when he meets Derrick Lewis in the headlining bout of UFC 230.

For someone who could have chosen to sit it out, wait for an inevitably lucrative meeting with Brock Lesnar, and then possibly get a crack at Jones, saying yes to Lewis seems like quite a risk in what could have otherwise been a pretty smooth retirement plan.

And, well … it is.

“It’s very risky,” Cormier told reporters, including MMAjunkie, during a media day on Thursday. “This is a guy that can finish the fight in no time.”

But here’s the thing about a fighter’s mentality: Thoughts that may make other people scared actually get Cormier excited. In Lewis, he has yet another opportunity to do what he likes to do to men who stand across him inside the cage: break them.

“And not only just on the night – I like to try to break them going forward,” Cormier said.

But say Cormier (21-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC)  isn’t able to break Lewis (21-5 MMA, 12-3 UFC) in their pay-per-view headliner at Madison Square Garden in New York. Say he is the one who loses, or gets physically broken, and for some reason ends up losing both his titles and the ability or even the negotiation leverage to meet Lesnar in the future.

How does that factor into Cormier’s mind when he’s agreeing to the type of fight he has ahead of him on Saturday?

“That’s the difference between me and a lot of other guys: If I was to get beat by Derrick Lewis and then I had nothing else, I’d still be OK,” Cormier said. “The reality is, what I’ve done is done. You can’t take it away. Just because I lose doesn’t change it. People don’t look at B.J. Penn any different because he loses fights. People don’t look at Randy Couture – all the greatest champions in UFC history have started to lose fights. Their value remains the same.

“And I have done what I have done, it will not change. On July 7, I cemented my place in MMA history. So if I lose, I lose. Hey, I’m going to make more money in TV than I’ve ever made fighting.”

It is true that Cormier has already earned a special place in UFC history. He’s currently ranked No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie pound-for-pound MMA rankings and has earned his spot in the ever-divisive “GOAT” debates. At 39, he’s beaten all but one of the opponents that have come his way.

That one opponent whom Cormier has lost to, though, seems to always find his way into the conversation when we talk about his legacy. After losing to Jones twice – though a failed drug test by Jones had led to one of those being overturned – in what ended up becoming one of the sport’s greatest rivalries, does becoming the greatest necessarily involve getting past Jones?

Well, that depends on your point of view.

“The reality is, it’s a guy that beat me,” Cormier said. “So, to be the greatest fighter of all time, I’ll probably have to beat him.”

But on the flip side?

“They can always point to the fact that, well, he won a fight, but he still lost two, so Jones is still better,” Cormier said. “There’s always an argument to the alternative.”

The way Cormier sees it, there are some “challenges” in the very thought of a a “GOAT.” To prove his point, he asked the interviewers for their opinions on who would be the greatest boxer of all time. As expected, the answers varied, from Muhammad Ali to “Sugar” Ray Leonard to Floyd Mayweather. To that, he flipped the question.

“How do you come to a universal conclusion on that argument?” Cormier said. “Just like, who’s the greatest pound-for-pound fighter ever? You never come to the true answer. And I can’t change that. It’s like the dog chasing his tale. I’d just be spinning in a circle, and I’m not a guy that likes to spin in a circle.”

To hear more from Cormier, check out the video above.

For more on UFC 230, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.