Daniel Cormier Claims He Was ‘Hurt Bad’ Day Of UFC 230
UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier secured a historic title defense over Derrick Lewis (watch highlights here) in the main event of last night’s (Sat., November 3, 2018) UFC 230 from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.
The win has Cormier entertaining a plethora of options, most namely his oft-discussed megafight with Brock Lesnar. He could also potentially fight returning archrival Jon Jones. That fight surprisingly seems to be losing momentum, however.
Both of those options probably still would have been on the table for the double champ even if he didn’t take the risk of facing Lewis on short-notice. But Cormier nearly didn’t. The all-time MMA great revealed at the UFC 230 post-fight press conference (via MMAjunkie) that he hurt his back rather significantly the day of the fight.
The way he did it might be an unexpected one as well. It was serious enough that he actually considering pulling out of the fight:
“I hurt it this morning bad. Sometimes I go into the octagon, and I hear in the build-up, ‘When is this guy going to get old?’ It could happen overnight. I thought it happened this morning when I sneezed, and I slipped my back out. Like seriously. We got some pictures that we may release later in the week. I sneezed, and because I sneezed my back slipped out. I tried to do my morning run, and it wasn’t happening.”
A Strange Decision
‘DC’ said he and his team reached a point early in the afternoon where they had to make a call if he was going to proceed with the fight:
“At around 12, 1 o’clock it was to the point where I was kind of singed over and leaning and Bob Cook said, ‘If you don’t get better then we’re going to have to make a decision on whether or not you’re going to fight,’” Cormier said. “It was real close.”
But the injury thankfully began to loosen up as the day wore on to Cormier’s delight. With his historic career winding down as he nears 40, he wasn’t sure how he was going to explain that he had to pull out of a PPV main event from sneezing:
“It was very scary because I had no idea how we were going to explain that one,” Cormier said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to explain this when I sneezed and hurt my back.’ That’s getting old. That’s what that is.”
