Cormier Will Keep 205 Title If He Loses At UFC 230

One way or another, Daniel Cormier is leaving Madison Square Garden with a title, as the current heavyweight and light heavyweight champion of the UFC believes one or the other will be over his shoulder.

Cormier defends the heavyweight title against Derrick Lewis in the UFC 230 main event on November 3rd and claimed in an interview that if he loses to Lewis, he’s keeping his light heavyweight title.

That move would create another logjam at 205 pounds, as Jon Jones is set to fight Alexander Gustafsson for the yet to be vacated title on December 29th at UFC 232.

“Because if I lose to Derrick, then who is to say I don’t go, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go defend my light heavyweight title. Now you can’t take it,’” Cormier said Friday at a media day at the UFC Performance Institute. “Maybe that adds a whole other part to the equation. You can’t take both of my belts if I lost that one. Right? So do I really have that much to lose if I have a second one? Look at it like that.”

“I am the light heavyweight champion until those guys fight,” Cormier said of Jones and Gustafsson. “So if the light heavyweight champion loses his heavyweight title and goes, ‘Wait I’m willing to defend my belt,’ now we have some conversations to have.”

“You’ve gotta remember, to think, ‘Oh man, it could all be gone in no time,’ last July I had zero — I lost. And then they said, Here you can have it back. I mean, really. I had none. I had no titles. From 2009 to 2013, I had no UFC titles. For about a month in 2017, I had no UFC titles. Not having a UFC title isn’t new to me. It’s just now I have them in abundance. I’ve got two.”

Quotes Transcribed By MMA Fighting