Daniel Cormier is one of the most successful fighters to ever step foot inside of the Octagon, but it wasn’t always easy for the former UFC double champion to compete at the highest level in combat sports.
Despite his high-level wrestling background and incredible success under the Strikeforce banner, fight fans didn’t know exactly how good “DC” would be until he made his UFC debut in 2013. He would go on to produce a 11-3 UFC record, capture titles in both the light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, defend each belt at least once, and earn victories over the likes of Anderson Silva, Stipe Miocic, Alexander Gustafsson, Anthony Johnson, Frank Mir, Dan Henderson, and Derrick Lewis. His only career losses came against the aforementioned Miocic and all-time great, Jon Jones.
With so much success inside of the cage you might think Cormier had everything on lock during his tenure with UFC. That might be the furthest thing from the truth. In reality, Cormier struggled to put himself in the right mindset to try to hurt another human being. He was forced to turn to starvation and abstinence to keep him on the right path.
“I tried to recreate that caveman sh-t in me every fight,” explained Cormier during a recent submission to his YouTube channel. “Abstain from sex for like a month. Don’t eat past like 2 pm in the afternoon.
“Literally just starving because when you’re hungry your mind goes to a place like, ‘If I had to go and kill something to eat right now, I would do it’. You can put yourself in almost a caveman mindset where you take all the pleasures of life that we as men love so much.
“Food, women, those things that you take it away from yourself and by the time you get in there with that dude you’re like, ‘Yo! You’re the reason I didn’t get to do this. You’re the reason I’m hungry,” he concluded.
Cormier, 45, has been retired from MMA since a trilogy loss to Miocic back in Aug. 2020. Since then, the former UFC double champion has been making a living through his UFC commentary, which some fight fans could do without. In any case, it’s interesting to hear how Cormier had to mentally and physically prepare himself for a fighting career that was already above most.
