UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier will be taking on challenger Anthony Johnson in the main event of UFC 210 in a rematch from their first fight at UFC 187.
At UFC 187, Cormier submitted Johnson in the third round of their fight with a rear naked choke, Cormier says history will repeat itself at UFC 210.
“Yes, I do. I don’t ever change. He’ll give up. We’ve seen it too many times,” Cormier said on The MMA Hour. “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.”
Cormier has defended the UFC Light Heavyweight Title once since the first fight with Johnson, defeating Alexander Gustafsson.
The trash talk between Cormier and Johnson has increased in recent months, but even Cormier says that hasn’t changed between them two since UFC 187.
“Truthfully, it just sounds like the same things that were said the first time,” Cormier said. “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.”
UFC 210 takes place on Saturday, April 8 from the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York with Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson headlining.
