Daniel Cormier on Saturday night added the UFC heavyweight championship to his light heavyweight title, stopping Stipe Miocic in dramatic fashion during the first round of their superfight at UFC 226.
Cormier (21-1, 1 no-contest) flattened the UFC’s long-reigning heavyweight champ with a right elbow out of a clinch. He finished Miocic (18-3) on the ground with 27 seconds left in the round by landing several shots to the defenseless champion’s head.
Cormier became the second fighter in UFC history to hold two championship belts simultaneously. Conor McGregor was the UFC’s featherweight champ in 2016 when he took the lightweight title from Eddie Alvarez.
Photo: AFP
“I was a heavyweight for a long time, and I left the division,” Cormier said. “I never knew what I could become, but tonight I got the answer. I’m a two-division champion, baby!”
The 39-year-old Cormier has never lost to anyone except Jon Jones, the former light heavyweight champion who beat him twice.
Cormier’s five-inch height disadvantage and eight-inch reach disadvantage against Miocic proved not to be a problem — and he actually weighed a few pounds more than Miocic at the weigh-in on Friday.
Cormier’s move up to challenge Miocic was only the third superfight in UFC history between reigning champions of two weight classes. Welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre defended his belt in 2009 by battering lightweight champ BJ Penn and McGregor accomplished his feat less than two years ago in his most recent MMA fight.
After beating Miocic, Cormier engaged in a bit of clearly planned theatrics with Brock Lesnar, the professional wrestler and former UFC heavyweight champion. Cormier called Lesnar into the cage and Lesnar shoved Cormier in the chest while the fighters traded insults to hype a potential future bout.
“Push me now, [and] you’re going to sleep later,” Cormier yelled at Lesnar. “Your days are in the past — in the stone age.”
Lesnar is widely expected to return to the UFC later this year.
Lesnar will have to face a remarkable fighter in Cormier, who was a heavyweight amateur wrestler before his late-starting MMA career.
Miocic had held the UFC heavyweight belt for more than two years and was the most dominant heavyweight champion in the history of the UFC’s most tumultuous division, defending his belt a record three times.
The Cleveland firefighter had not lost since December 2014 and had not been stopped since September 2012.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
RSS