For some time Daniel Cormier has set his 40th birthday as the date when he’ll finally hangs up his gloves, but with that March deadline approaching it seems the current UFC heavyweight champion is starting to distance himself from that plan.
“There’s nothing left to prove,” Cormier told UFC.com. “But I’m not a guy that has been fighting just to prove things. I fight because I love to compete. It’s never been that I have to prove that I’m the best. That was never the reason why I fought to begin with.
“So if the desire is there to compete, then I’ll go and I’ll fight. But if it’s not, then I won’t. If I get ready to start getting into a training camp and I just don’t feel it, I won’t do it. That’s the beauty of being where I am today and being so at ease with my career and with my place and my standing in the history of the sport.
“If I get into a training camp, and I just don’t have this in me no more, I don’t have the desire to train as hard as I want to train, I’ll just stop. I fight because I still love to compete, and I still want to compete, that’s why I’m gonna fight.”
Whatever happens, Cormier feels his legacy is already set as one of the greatest of all-time.
“You’re looking at a guy who now stands among the greatest fighters to ever do it. It’s hard to really list a group of fighters as the best and leave me off if you’re being objective. To lose two fights to one guy and that’s it in your whole career and blaze through everybody else. Outside of those Jones fights, the toughest fight I ever had was [Alexander] Gustafsson. Everyone else I kind of buzzed right through.”
