"I have been in tough, tough situations and Rumble hasn't really shown that ability. I've shown that I could submit Anthony; Anthony hasn't really submitted anyone. That's not really a part of his game. So if you break down the 3 ways to win a fight - decision, knockout and submission - I can accomplish those whereas he has to win with that one way. He has to knock me out to beat me. I don't think Anthony Johnson could outhustle me for 25 minutes," stated UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, who talked about his upcoming rematch with Anthony Johnson, a future rematch with Jon Jones, and much more. Check it out!
PC: December 10th, you're taking the show on the road to Toronto for a rematch with Anthony "Rumble" Johnson. How is everything going?
DC: It's good, man. You know, we are just kind of in that beginning stage of starting to get my body prepared to train. This last fight camp and the two fight camps prior to UFC 197 and then UFC 200, it took a lot out of me because of all of the emotion that goes into fighting against Jon Jones. So I took a little break. It hasn't been that long. It's going to end up being about 4 or 5 months between fights, July to December, but I needed a little bit of a break from the emotional wear and tear that it takes to prepare for a Jones fight. And I feel like I got that. I got to spend some time at home with my family and got to do some things that I needed to do. But yeah, I'm taking the show on the road, dog. This will be...and it's crazy because you never think about it. You don't generally pick a home arena for a guy unless you're Ronda; she tends to fight in Vegas and McGregor tends to fight in Vegas, but man, my last 7 fights have been in either Vegas or Houston, Texas. I haven't fought anywhere different in my last 7 fights, so it's actually kind of refreshing to be going on the road a little bit and doing something different. So when the opportunity to go to Toronto came, I kind of jumped on it. This is not just for me though, P. We from Louisiana and a lot of people at home don't tend to go too far away from home. A big vacation for us is going to Houston or something like that. A lot of my family get to go to Vegas all of the time and now I think we get to show them something different by going to Toronto and I'm excited about it, man.
PC: The weather is fairly warm here and I'm sure it is on the west coast as well. Toronto in December I'm sure will be pretty cold. Does that play into your approach at all as far as maybe wanting to get down early and get acclimated?
DC: I think it's the same. I don't think the elevation is much different. That would be the only concern is if the elevation was extremely high or the altitude. I don't think Toronto has a crazy altitude difference. I will check that out and if there is a huge difference in altitude, I will go up there a little early; nothing too crazy. But the cold weather is the cold weather; it don't matter. Fighting in Vegas in January, it's still cold outside, but when you're in the arena, it doesn't matter what the weather is outside. You don't really feel the difference.
PC: You told me you needed a break from Jon Jones and that if the UFC would have came to you and said Jon is clear to fight, you would have turned them down simply because you needed a break from the emotional rollercoaster that comes with the fight being on again and off again. How important was that for you and for you to face Rumble and take a break from the Jones saga?
DC: It was very important. It takes a toll on not only me, but my family. Everybody is invested in it. Even Selena; she loves the fight game, but the fight with Jones, she sees the stress that it has on me, which in turn it's everywhere. It follows me home from the gym; it's everywhere. Which in turn affects my family. Not negatively; it's not like us having fights or anything, but she could see that it doesn't allow me to be who I am and because it consumes me so much, because I want to win so, so badly. When I got ready to go fight Alexander Gustafsson, there was no emotion, so I could just go train. I go home and I go back and train. But everything in the gym, I leave in the gym. I don't have those moments where I just kind of stare off into space thinking about the fight like, "I gotta get this done!" It's a different type of thinking. So it was very important for me to just separate myself from all of that and all the drama and the saga of him and the relationship in terms of fighting.
PC: If Daniel Cormier was to retire and never fight Jon Jones again, are you okay with that? Does it still kind of burn at you or has it burned out?
DC: No, no, no, he beat me; it's always going to burn at me. If I never got to compete with him again, it would really suck, but what am I gonna do? I can only control what I can control. As I was on July 9th, I was there, he was there on April 23rd and I was hurt. The stars just have not aligned for us to get locked inside of an Octagon again. I think that we will because I'm going to beat "Rumble" Johnson and we will see what happens next. I don't know what's going to happen in terms if his suspension, but when he comes back, we will fight and if we don't, the stars just never aligned for us to do it again. That would really suck though.
PC: It's like we're doing an interview in reverse now. When I was speaking to you about a rematch with Jones, I felt you had the most to work on because you lost that fight. Now you're fighting a rematch with Johnson and I feel he has more he could go to the gym and work on because you beat him. Are you approaching this fight with that mentality, that you're facing a different version of Anthony Johnson?
DC: I have to approach it that way because things went really well for me in that fight. I took some damage, but I put him in positions that I wanted him to fight in. He has to go back and look at those positions and say, "Do I have enough time to sew up these holes to actually go and beat this guy?" Now the only difference with that is the path of victory doesn't change for him. If him and I fight 10 times, "Rumble" Johnson has to knock me out to win. Because if we go 25 minutes and it's a matter of us just hustling, I have showed time and time again, when it gets tough, I can outhustle guys. I have been in tough, tough situations and Rumble hasn't really shown that ability. I've shown that I could submit Anthony; Anthony hasn't really submitted anyone. That's not really a part of his game. So if you break down the 3 ways to win a fight - decision, knockout and submission - I can accomplish those whereas he has to win with that one way. He has to knock me out to beat me. I don't think Anthony Johnson could outhustle me for 25 minutes.
PC: Although Jon Jones is so dangerous from everywhere, I still feel like Anthony Johnson put you in a worse spot than Jones was able to do, even though it was temporary. When you're facing a guy like Johnson, who people fear and he's considered to be so scary, how do you prepare mentally to be closed inside of a cage with him?
DC: It is scary! Make no mistake about it, Anthony Johnson is a scary guy. He can knock anyone out and he's very strong. People think that Anthony Johnson is just this brutal power puncher. They misjudge him. He is powerful, but he's so fast too. That's what makes him so good. You don't necessarily see the punch because the punch is coming so fast. But yeah, preparing for Jones is a lot harder because Jones has all of the skills. If you're not careful, he will submit you, if you're not careful, he can kick you in the head and knock you out, and you know he can beat you over the course of 25 minutes. So it is different; it's more difficult...even though Anthony is a more dangerous and scary individual, it's not overwhelming because the reality is even though he is a hard punching guy, if I saw him and he and I had to fight outside of mixed martial arts, there would be no fear there. So nobody really scares you to the point where it's like, "I would not want to face this guy in other situations," so it really doesn't matter; everybody can punch.
PC: Michael Bisping made the comment that he's a champion now after all of this time because of the new USADA testing. You're a champion and have been all about cleaning the sport up. Does Bisping have a point? Do you think there is light being shed on dark places?
DC: You know, you're seeing a lot of guys getting caught and that tells you guys were doing things that are wrong. They continued to do things wrong not knowing that we were dealing with an entirely different entity in terms of testing guys and being able to pinpoint what they were doing. They were testing certain guys before, guys headlining cards, but I don't know if they were doing testing as in-depth as USADA is. But here is the thing, and this is important for USADA, USADA has done some testing and they have caught guys and these guys have been able to prove that they aren't doing what they've been caught for. Yoel Romero comes to mind and Tim Means comes to mind. They have to really have an idea of what they are testing for and what they are catching these guys for. Because every time somebody actually beats that system, it does kind of make USADA look a little bad, and I'm a USADA guy, but you can't be having these tests come back positive and then these guys go and get a defense and that defense proves that you caught them for something that may not be 100% illegal. It's a very weird situation because you cannot have guys coming back and saying, "I tested positive, but not for what they said and what they tested me for is not illegal to the point where I need a 2-year suspension." So I think they need to figure out how to either really hammer these guys to the wall when they catch them where there is no defense that's going to prove that they are not as guilty as it intended it to be, or they got to know before it becomes public knowledge that these guys have a failed test. Anytime you start doing something new, there is an even flow to it and then there are some ups and some downs and it will eventually get itself corrected.
PC: Before I let you go, Dan Henderson just recently retired. He's had a legendary career and will certainly be a Hall of Famer. Any farewell words for Hendo?
DC: My memories of Dan Henderson are from wrestling to mixed martial arts. In wrestling, he was a guy I looked up to way back in 1992 and 1996. He's always been a warrior and a guy that you could look up to, man. If you want to know how to compete, just follow Dan Henderson. It was great to see Dan Henderson go out with his hand held high. Most of our legends don't get to walk off on their own terms. There are more guys like Muhammad Ali who stayed a little too long and they go out losing to guys that they shouldn't be losing to than Georges St. Pierre, who got to go out on top. I feel like Dan Henderson was competitive with the champion and almost became the UFC champion at 46 years old.
PC: Thanks for the time. Best of luck in December and I'm sure we will be speaking before the fight again. Is there anything else you would like to add?
DC: Thanks again to FightHype and all of my sponsors, Monster Energy, Metro PCS, American Ethanol, American Kickboxing Academy and Zinkin Entertainment. Thank you guys for always holding me down and believing in me and thanks to the FightHype community for constantly checking in on ya boy! I appreciate it!
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]