Under UFC 210 kommer den regerande lätt-tungviktsmästaren Daniel Cormier att försvara sitt bälte mot Anthony Johnson i Buffalo i New York. Detta blir det andra mötet mellan de två, men Cormier känner inte att saker och ting kommer att gå annorlunda den här gången.
Cormier hävdar att han kommer att ta matchen mot Johnson stående denna gången, men tror inte att Johnson kommer ha den konditionen som krävs och ger då upp.
Det här berättade Cormier via ’The MMA Hour’:
He’ll give up. We’ve seen it too many times. And you’re making me be kinda mean to this guy when that’s not who I am to him, but it’s the truth. You can point to it, (Josh) Koscheck and me and Vitor (Belfort) and all these. It’s only the truth. I’m only speaking the truth, and here’s the thing, I’ll say it in front of him too. It’s not like I won’t say this in front of Anthony Johnson.
Truthfully, it just sounds like the same things that were said the first time. Before we fought, he said, ‘I can knock him out whenever I decide to knock him out.’ That’s what he said. He said, ‘Daniel knows what’s coming to him. I’m going to knock him out.’ And I just look at that and I go, okay, well, what happens if you don’t knock me out? What happens if you don’t knock me out? What happens if you hit me with your best shot and I continue to press forward, and I continue to engage you, and I continue to stay in your face the entire time? What happens then? And we saw what happened. He rolled over, gave me his neck, and let me choke him out so he could get out of the Octagon.
People can believe everything they want. I love Mike Tyson. I was a fan, as everybody else was. The moment somebody stood up to him, he didn’t do so well. And that’s the same thing with Anthony Johnson. The guy’s a bully. He wants to intimidate you, he wants to dominate you, he wants to knock you out. But what happens when you don’t knock somebody out? What happens? I saw this guy beat Andrei Arlovski within an inch of his life in the first round of a fight. By the end of the fight, I thought Andrei Arlovski was going to win. Dude had a broken jaw, but once [Johnson] couldn’t get him out of there, Andrei Arlovski just had to do a little bit more and he could’ve won the fight. C’mon man. You ain’t knocking me out.
Cormier blev tidigare tvungen att dra sig ur ett andra möte mot Johnson under UFC 206 då han blev skada, men nu lovar han att han inte kommer bli skadad igen. Cormier berättar även att han gillar det faktumet att folk tvivlar på honom inför UFC 210.
Because I love the doubt, man. I love the fact that I get doubt. Jon Anik is my buddy, and Jon is a big, big (betting) lines guy. So every time Anthony and I are supposed to fight, the lines come out, and it’s like we’re dead even. It’s like people don’t know what to make of a fight between Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson, when in reality it should be very easy to know what to make of a fight between me and Anthony Johnson. But everybody seems to question me in regards to fighting that man. And you know, I like the guy. He’s a great guy. I think he’s a nice guy, he’s a gentleman, he’s always nice, he’s always friendly. But in terms of us competitively, in the world I live in, he doesn’t beat me.
He’ll still be able to fight for about 10 minutes, and then we’ll be good to go. There’s a difference in the training styles and the fighting styles of my team and his team. Right? So you saw Michael Johnson really get his hands on Khabib (Nurmagomedov) early, but after a while, man, that grind really starts to wear on you. And if you’re not built for it, you’re just not built for it.
UFC 210 äger rum i Buffalo i New York den 8 april.
