Against Jon Jones at UFC 214, Daniel Cormier may have slept on one aspect of his defensive preparations, much to his detriment
Up until former UFC light heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier took a vicious kick to the head from Jon Jones in Anaheim on Saturday night, many pundits were remarking on just how the far the 38-year-old’s striking game had come on in comparison to his first fight with “Bones” in 2015.
While Jones had voiced his opinion that “DC” had not changed much around since their first bout at UFC 182 in 2015. Both men were initially set to square off the previous year at UFC 178 (but for a torn meniscus suffered by Cormier) and had taken part in a “Q&A” in order to promote the bout.
In retrospect, there is one very interesting and pertinent point which was addressed by both men in that event involving
“I do have tendencies, and I know what he is talking about because they’re glaring,” Cormier remarked in response to Jones claiming to have identifying weaknesses in Cormier’s game. “I know that there’s one thing that I do that has gotten me in trouble – if you want to call it trouble – that I’ve been in a fight before, and I haven’t been in much trouble so in the instance that I did get maybe a cut or something, I know it was because of that tendency he is talking about.”
“You’re talking about the Josh Barnett fight,” Jones responded.
Cormier had taken on former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett under the Strikeforce banner in 2012. While “DC” took the win, Barnett repeatedly capitalized on Cormier’s propensity to drop his posture to the right which allowed his opponent to land his fair share of shots.
Given the fact that Jones spoke following the fight of his intention to exploit this particular weakness of Cormier’s, it will serve as a bitter pill to swallow for the former champion
