The clock is ticking on Daniel Cormier’s MMA career.
”DC” just proved he’s still the best light heavyweight in the UFC not named Jon Jones with an impressive shellacking of Volkan Oezdemir at UFC 220. But he’s holding firm on a decision to retire himself once he hits the age of 40.
“Come March, I will have twelve months at max left,” Cormier said on the latest episode of The MMA Hour. “I’m going to be done by March 20, 2019. I won’t be fighting again.”
”I’m going to be done at 40,” he explained. “I won’t be back. There won’t be jumping around or ‘I’m done until I get the right type of fight.’ It’ll be over. I’m not going to be doing this anymore.”
UFC light heavyweight champ @dc_mma weighs in on retirement: "This could be the last year of my career." Watch #TheMMAHour live: https://t.co/11sYrEm5Ug pic.twitter.com/qk96p30CTE
— MMAFighting.com (@MMAFighting) January 22, 2018
The light heavyweight champ spent a good portion of his post-fight press conference talking about his family and the support they’ve given him over the years. Now he wants to pay that back and start working on the next generation of Cormier athletes.
”I’ve said time and time again that I’ve lived a great life in sports, I’ve loved every moment of it. My family has revolved around sports. Not only my family, Selena and the kids but also my mom and my dad. I’ve been the center of the athletic universe for my family for a really, really long time, and it’s time for that to be little Daniel and Marquita. It’s time for them to be the center of our athletic competition, and I just want to be one of those crazy dads that gets to yell on the sideline and just go crazy and brag about his kids.”
The big question for fans, of course, is whether Cormier will end up facing his nemesis Jon Jones once more before hanging up the gloves. That all depends on the results of Jon’s recent USADA drug test failure, which has yet to have an official suspension length attached to it. We’ve heard everything from a year to four years as a possibility, and if Jones gets anything longer than a year and a half that’ll put his return past the March 2019 date Daniel just laid out.
Considering how their last fight went, that may be perfectly fine with “DC.”