Alright, guys.
So everybody has their weight class, right?
You could back it up from that with every athlete, every parent out there that's got
a kid and has some dream of what the kid’s going to do.
Every child has a sport where they're going to do better in this sport than they are in
that, which just matches up mentally and physically.
But every fighter, every athlete, also has a weight class, and I will tell you this.
I was at the AKA yesterday, okay?
I went in there to do a workout with Cormier and, first off, back—AKA, nicest gym by
tenfold that I've ever seen in my entire life, let alone set foot in.
This thing is humongous.
It's in a strip mall.
It's got beautiful advertising.
It's a corner space.
It's two stories.
They must have 15 rooms in that place.
They must have 15 rooms between aerobics rooms, bag rooms, wrestling rooms, jiu-jitsu rooms,
weightlifting rooms.
Incredible showers.
Incredible locker rooms.
I feel like I owe this to them to point this out.
I just had such a great experience there.
But I walked in and I'm like, my go—I didn't know any MMA gym in the world ran this well
and was this large and organized and…
So anyway, go back to the weight class there for a second, but I had a really great experience.
I wanted to give a public thank you to the AKA.
But, every athlete in combat sports—talking about fighters here—have a weight class,
and if they don’t get in the right weight class you're going to have tremendously different
results.
It's really important to know.
And you don’t get to test a lot of those.
You usually sit down and go, “Okay, this is my weight class.”
You then start dieting.
Sometimes that's eating [00:01:43].
Maybe you're going up in size.
Generally, 99%, we see guys trying to go down in size, but that's their weight class and
they don’t ever look back and they don’t ever test the waters anywhere else.
And largely, MMA works that way.
You get into your division, you get into your bracket with your guys, you don’t get a
chance to move around.
Use Daniel Cormier specifically as an example.
But this guy—I'm going to go way back, okay—this guy was the best wrestler in the nation, for
sure!
He was the best wrestler in the United States of America.
He didn't win the national championship.
He happened to be in the same weight class as the best wrestler in the world, Cael Sanderson,
who went on to prove it, went on to win Olympic gold medals.
These guys ended up in the same weight class.
You're not going to be able to get straight, right?
Only one guy’s going to get that championship medal.
Post season, Cael decides to stay in that same weight class.
Daniel Cormier—and I'm talking post college career, senior level, Olympic level, wrestling—Daniel
Cormier decides, “Look, I've dealt with that guy enough times.
I'm just going to move weight classes.”
The second he does, he doesn’t lose to another American.
He makes every team there is—multiple teams, world and Olympic teams—had no problems
whatsoever.
He then, for one season—Daniel Cormier—for one season decides to go up even a higher
weight class to the heavyweight class.
Now, he never wanted to be there.
He never planned to stay there.
He thought, “I'm just going to spend some time, I'm going to get some matches, and I'm
just going to weigh whatever I weigh, take that component off my shoulders and just go
out and train and compete.”
He never lost a match.
No American ever beat him.
And he had a guy, just by example, Steve Mocco was in the weight class, who was an Olympian,
who was a world medalist, who was a national champion, a title that Daniel did not win
in college.
Daniel beat him.
I mean, just by example, it was really tough guys and Daniel beat them all.
Which would make you think back to Daniel’s college career.
Well, I'm telling you, he was the best guy in the country.
Telling you that he was, but he was in the same bracket with the best guy in the world.
Now he's at 184 pounds.
By NCAA rules, there are still two weight classes left.
He could have gone to 197 pounds.
I was a 197-pounder.
Top guys in the country, I'll tell you right now.
Daniel Cormier would have won the weight.
He could have gone up to heavyweight, apparently, based on the fact that he went to heavyweight
on the highest of levels [00:04:11] some of the best guys in the world, let alone best
guys in the country.
Point I'm trying to make, the weight class is important, and I think there's a lot of
guys you could play this game with but I'm going to play it with Daniel really fast because
I grabbed a hold of him last night, okay?
I used to spar with Daniel Cormier when he was a light heavyweight, when I was a light
heavyweight.
Now we're both up in heavyweight, same same.
He moved weight classes, I moved weight class.
No, not so fast.
Not so fast.
Not the same thing.
I grabbed a hold of him last night.
It was like meeting a new person.
He felt different.
His body weight was different.
His balance was different.
His attitude was different.
His demeanor was different.
And it just dawned on me—listen—he's found his weight class, okay?
Strip him at 205.
Go right ahead.
Take 205 away because if he ever tries to go back, people are going to try to talk him
out of it including me.
He may not listen to me, but I'm going to bring people in on it.
I'll call Ben Askren.
I'll call Kevin Jackson.
We'll team up on him.
“Look, Daniel, you're looking at this wrong.
You probably should have been heavyweight since you were 20 years old.
You probably should have been in the heavyweight class.
Would have been an NCAA champion.
I don’t think anybody would argue that.
But you might have been the world or the Olympic champion.
Would have been the UFC champion many years ago, right?
Was the Strikeforce Grand Prix champ.”
I'll just remind you this, in heavyweight.
But many times you look at it, when a guy goes and has success in a different weight,
what’s the first thing we think?
We think, “Well, yeah, must be an easier weight class.
That guy was a silver medal down here, he's a gold medal up here.
Must be an easier weight class.”
No.
False.
Sometimes a guy just needs to be in the right weight class, and I could just tell you from
that brief, brief grabbing a hold of him last night, working on a couple of techniques with
him, it was a different guy.
It was a different feel.
He's at the correct weight class.
His whole attitude was different.
The way his eyes looked when he talked, his demeanor of not being sucked and drawn out,
putting that stress on, it was just different.
I don’t want to see him go back to 205 pounds.
There are a lot of 205-pounders I want to see him fight.
I don’t want to see him go back to 205 pounds.
He has found the right weight class and anybody that wants to come up and challenge him, I
think they just have to do it there.
And of course, what am I talking about?
Sure, I am talking about Jon Jones.
In many ways, yes, I do think that that trilogy is going to happen regardless of what Daniel
says, right?
Daniel’s in one of these points in his career where he's changing his mind a lot, right?
He's even said, “Look, I want to do two more fights,” and he already drilled one
with Stipe.
So he's kind of saying, “Look, I got one left and give me Lesnar.”
I don't know about that.
I don't know if he's got X amount of fights or if he's got more of X amount of time, you
know?
I think to assume that he's going to be here for at least a year is a very reasonable,
very reasonable bet.
I think you would probably have safe money if you could put it on more like three years.
But Cormier is a guy with a lot of options.
He's got a lot of other opportunities.
He's been competing a long time, so let's take him at his word a little bit.
But yeah, I think ultimately I'm talking about Jon Jones and I am talking about doing it
at heavyweight, and I think it does greatly change the scenario, right?
They both weighed the same.
They both cut some weight.
They both got in the ring right around 220.
They would get in the ring at different sizes, that's true, and you could argue whether that
size favored Daniel or whether, you know, the little bit of a speed and being a little
lighter would favor Jon Jones.
I get all of those things, but that is Daniel’s weight class.
I would suggest to you in college his career would have been different had he been in the
correct weight class, which is only a hindsight issue, but he's proven that he wasn’t in
the right weight class to win the gold medal.
I believe that his MMA career, a meaningful and incredible as it's been, I think he should
have been at heavyweight, and that was just my experience not only from looking at his
record, looking at what he's done at heavyweight, looking at his success at heavyweight.
But grabbing a hold of him, it was a different feel.
It was a different guy.
Hearing his attitude, seeing the way he was living it, I mean, his jovialness, it was
different, and it's important guys are at the right weight.
And I really hope also, in conjunction with just sharing a thought, I do hope we see a
lot more Daniel.
I do hope that he reneges on his statement that “I'm going to do one more fight.”
I hope that he does multiple more fights because he really needs to show the world what he
can do and he needs to show it at the correct weight class, which for him—my opinion,
my experience, and I've known him a long time—it's at heavyweight.