Fast facts
- Division: Former UFC light heavyweight and heavyweight champion (retired)
- Record: Wrestling marks of 101-9 in high school, 61-0 at Colby Community College, 53-10 at Oklahoma State
- Nationality: American
- Team/gym: American Kickboxing Academy
- Notable wins: Antônio Silva, Josh Barnett, Frank Mir, Dan Henderson, Anthony Johnson (twice), Alexander Gustafsson, Anderson Silva, Volkan Oezdemir
At UFC 332 in Salt Lake City, Damian Pinas needed 75 seconds and one short uppercut from the clinch to leave Andrey Pulyaev unconscious. Daniel Cormier sounded like a fan at cageside. “I’ve never seen nothing like him, man,” he said on the broadcast, as MMA Junkie reported, before adding, “I think he might be the single biggest power puncher I’ve seen since we started doing this.”
That kind of awe is worth something coming from Cormier, because very little in his life came to him easily, and he has spent most of it around people who hit hard.
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Lafayette
Cormier was born March 20, 1979, in Lafayette, Louisiana, the son of Joseph and Audrey Cormier, with an older brother, Joseph, a sister, Felicia, and a younger brother, Ferral. On Thanksgiving Day in 1986, when Daniel was seven, his father was shot and killed by the father of his second wife.
The boy grew into one of the best athletes Louisiana produced in his era. At Northside High School he won three state wrestling championships and finished 101-9, with 89 of those wins by fall. After ninth grade he lost only twice, and both were injury defaults. He was an All-State linebacker who ran a 4.5 in the 40, and LSU offered him a football scholarship. He turned it down to keep wrestling, which tells you most of what you need to know about where his heart was.
He went to Colby Community College in Kansas and went 61-0, winning junior college national titles in 1998 and 1999. Then came Oklahoma State, and Cael Sanderson. Cormier made the 2001 NCAA final at 184 pounds and lost to Sanderson 8-4. Six of his 10 college losses came against the same man, the eventual four-time NCAA champion from Iowa State. Cormier left Stillwater with a sociology degree and a very specific education in what it feels like to run into someone better.
The wrestler
His freestyle career was the stuff of a serious international résumé. He was the senior U.S. national champion every year from 2003 to 2008 at 96 kg, finished fourth at the 2004 Olympics after a semifinal loss to Khadzhimurat Gatsalov, won Pan American Games gold in 2003 and took world bronze in 2007. The win I keep coming back to is the 2005 Golden Grand Prix Ivan Yarygin in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, a tournament many consider the hardest in the sport. Few Americans have won it. Cormier did.
The 2008 Olympics were supposed to be the finish. He was named team captain. Then his kidneys failed from cutting weight to make 211 pounds, and he was pulled from competition. Afterward he put on 40 pounds.
The fighter
After Beijing he walked into American Kickboxing Academy alongside Cain Velasquez, Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck, and that room sharpened his striking and submission wrestling. He debuted in September 2009, flew to Australia and beat Lucas Browne for the Xtreme MMA heavyweight title on July 31, 2010, then took the King of the Cage heavyweight belt from Tony Johnson two weeks later.
Strikeforce is where people started paying attention. Cormier had doubts about entering the heavyweight Grand Prix, citing his inexperience and his height and reach disadvantages against the field. He entered anyway, replacing Alistair Overeem on five weeks’ notice against Antônio Silva on Sept. 10, 2011. He knocked Silva out in the first round and broke his hand doing it. In the final on May 19, 2012, he beat Josh Barnett by unanimous decision (49-46, 50-45, 50-45), broke his right hand again and needed surgery.
In the UFC he outpointed Frank Mir and Roy Nelson at heavyweight. With Velasquez, his teammate, holding the heavyweight title, Cormier announced he’d drop to 205 win or lose, and some writers questioned whether a man whose kidneys had failed at 211 could get there safely. He weighed 224 for Nelson. Then he stopped Patrick Cummins in the first round at UFC 170 and choked Dan Henderson unconscious in the third at UFC 173.
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Jones
Jon Jones beat him by unanimous decision at UFC 182, and both men took Fight of the Night. When Jones was stripped and suspended in April 2015 after felony charges from a traffic accident in Albuquerque, Cormier stepped in against Anthony Johnson for the vacant belt at UFC 187. Johnson dropped him with an overhand right in the opening seconds. Cormier won the next two rounds and submitted Johnson with a rear-naked choke in the third.
He defended against Alexander Gustafsson in a back-and-forth split decision at UFC 192, beat Anderson Silva at UFC 200 after the Jones rematch fell apart over a potential doping violation, and choked Johnson out again in the second round at UFC 210, after missing weight by 1.2 pounds and making 205 on a second try.
The rematch finally happened at UFC 214 in Anaheim on July 29, 2017. Jones knocked him out in the third round with a head kick and follow-up strikes on the ground. Cormier, in tears, told the crowd, “I guess if he wins both fights there is no rivalry.” Joe Rogan later apologized on Twitter for interviewing him while he couldn’t gather his thoughts. Weeks later Jones tested positive for Oral Turinabol, the California State Athletic Commission changed the result to a no-contest, and the belt went back to Cormier. He defended it by stopping Volkan Oezdemir in the second round at UFC 220.
In 2018 he coached opposite Stipe Miocic on season 27 of The Ultimate Fighter, and the two fought later that year. Cormier went on to become the second fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two divisions at the same time and the first to defend belts in two divisions. Fight Matrix ranks him seventh all time at light heavyweight, 13th at heavyweight and 14th pound for pound.
Now
He’s retired, a UFC Hall of Famer, a color commentator next to Rogan, and since the summer of 2018 the head wrestling coach at Gilroy High School. In April 2021 the LHSAA inducted him into its Hall of Fame, which feels right for a guy whose best stories still start on a Louisiana high school mat.
He still has opinions, too. In comments shared on X by Dovy, Cormier pushed back on the idea of Justin Gaethje giving up his belt to fight Conor McGregor. “You can’t do that,” he said, arguing it would hurt Gaethje’s legacy to value the money fight over being champion. He allowed that Gaethje “probably was just talking,” then pointed at the alternatives: “Arman is a star, there’s Ilia too.” That’s a two-division champion who once nearly died making weight telling the lightweight king to keep the belt, and Gaethje would be smart to listen.
