Daniel Cormier has a new fight lined up against Stipe Miocic at UFC 241, but he’s also indicated he still harbors an ambition to fight his biggest rival Jon Jones for a third time too before his career is over.
“It’s all I want,” Cormier told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani. “When I fight Jones, I feel most complete when I’m preparing for competition against that guy because it makes me train harder. It makes me train smarter. I do everything right in preparation and I believe that if I do stick around that would be the fight that I do it for. And it would be at 205 pounds because I need to go and get that back from him.
“I don’t need the deck stacked in my favor. My whole life I’ve overcome odds. I’ve faced uphill battle after uphill battle my entire life and I’ve always been able to get through it. This is one of the only things I’ve not been able to conquer. I need to go do it. I have to get it right.”
The Miocic fight comes first though and Cormier says he has no problem taking that fight, despite his disappointment that a long-rumored fight with Brock Lesnar won’t be happening due to the WWE superstar having now confirmed his retirement from MMA.
“It was a little disappointing in the sense that I would have loved to compete against [Brock]. It was a big fight, big moment, but I’ve always been a guy that does what’s up next. . . I’ve said it from day one. I’ve always said I’d fight Stipe again if Lesnar couldn’t fight so I was like, ‘Let’s fight Stipe.’”
However, Cormier isn’t completely ruling out the possibility of Lesnar still changing his mind.
“I think that Brock’s a competitor, and if the right opportunity presents itself for him, he would do it. The guy’s a fighter. Everybody kinda sh*ts on Brock Lesnar and says this guys can’t fight, but he’s a fighter and he’s a competitor, and he likes money. So for the right amount of money and the right opportunity, I’m sure he could be convinced to come back.”
