Stipe Miocic Reveals That Anderson Silva Helped Him Beat Daniel Cormier

Stipe Miocic is once again the heavyweight champion. He reclaimed the belt by beating Daniel Cormier via TKO in the fourth round at UFC 241.

Yet, it didn’t appear he was going to win the fight early on. Cormier used his wrestling and striking effectively and was up 30-27 on many spectators’ scorecards heading into the fourth round. For Miocic, he was not happy with his performance early on.

“It was terrible (the beginning of the fight), my God. It seemed that I could not fight,” Miocic said to Combate. “I thought, ‘should I be here? Then I started to open more, found the distance and began to see openings. Okay, we’re fine, I get it now”

Then, in the fourth, he started to attack the body, which set up the TKO win. Why Miocic decided to switch up the gameplan like that was simple. He was watching past fights from Cormier’s where he saw Anderson Silva have a ton of success hitting ‘DC’ in the body.

So, after his original game plan didn’t work, he remembered the success Silva had attacking the body, and decided to implement that attack himself.

“In the third round (I decided to change my strategy). I started to see it between the third and fourth rounds. My coaches were talking to me and I said ‘let’s attack his body’. He leaves it really open and nobody takes advantage of it,” Miocic explained.

“I remember Anderson Silva hit him with a body kick and that hurt him a little bit, so I thought of attacking him there, and it worked.”

Now, with the help of Silva, Stipe Miocic is once again the heavyweight champion of the world.

What do you make of Stipe Miocic using Anderson Silva to help him beat Daniel Cormier?