Daniel Cormier Says Hand Injury Wouldn’t Spoil His Fight Against Derrick Lewis
A lot of people were surprised when it was announced that current two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier is slated to defend his heavyweight title against Derrick ‘The Black Beast’ Lewis in the UFC 230 main event on Nov. 3 at Madison Square Garden New York. That’s because ‘DC’ was adamantly holding out Brock Lesnar fight, while Lewis just knocked out Alexander Volkov at UFC 229.
Cormier said he couldn’t deny the fight as UFC offered him a tempting deal. Even it took a long time for promotion to finalize this main event. So both ‘DC’ and ‘The Black Beast’ neither have much time in the way to prepare.
Even Cormier admits that his health isn’t 100% heading into UFC 230 as he’s still dealing with a hand injury.
“Man, I always wanted to compete, but I was hurt and I kinda set my sights on just waiting for Brock [Lesnar],” Daniel Cormier said Monday on The MMA Hour (H/T MMA Fighting). “Then the UFC called me and asked me. That’s generally how it goes, but this time they said, ‘Can you fight in a few weeks?’ And I was like, ‘Well, honestly, I’m not ready to fight right now, but I could see where I stand. I could see if there’s any chance that I could get in a fight.’ They said Derrick Lewis. I said, ‘Okay, let me go see if my hand will hold up when I punch something. If it does, then yeah, I’ll go fight.’
“It’s good enough to fight,” Cormier continued. “It’s not 100 percent, I’m going to be honest. My fist is closing but not all the way. It feels like now I have like a badly jammed finger. Like, it feels like my finger’s just jammed really badly right now.
“You ever had like a jammed finger and you just can’t really pop it? It kinda like sticks up a little bit more than the other finger? That’s where my hand is right now, so my pointer finger doesn’t close completely. Like, I can’t make a closed, tight fist, but it just feels like if I could pop it, I would be okay. The problem is I’m just too afraid to pop it. It hurts. Like, I’m not popping it. I’m just kinda hoping that if I’m sparring and I punch someone, that it pops and goes back to normal.”
As the injury is still there, Cormier is confident that he’ll prepare well for a showdown and keeping it very careful to avoid pulling out.
“I can do a lot of things,” he said. “Some sparring. I’m just not hitting as hard with my right hand. I can wrestle, but I’m just trying to be very careful. I’m kinda working around it, because if something’s going to happen, I prefer it to happen in the fight than in the training room. Because how horrible would be it be if I take this fight, three weeks until the fight, and then have to pull out a week later?
“I’m telling you, I’m going hard though. I’m hitting dudes. I’m punching dudes and trying to get ready to fight. I’m not going to cheat myself and go into this fight with Derrick — I have to be very prepared. The guy is a big, strong, tough guy who’s there to win the fight, so I have to be prepared to do everything in there.”
Do you think Cormier will successfully get through the fight at UFC 230?
