Midnight Mania! Daniel Cormier addresses accusations of biased, ‘unfair’ commentary

Welcome to Midnight Mania!

UFC commentator is not an easy gig.

Events run for a long time, and shows only seem to be growing more stacked with fights. 12+ fights on a card can equate to roughly seven hours of broadcast, which is a long time for two or three commentators to flap their gums without some slip ups along the way. Retired double champion, Daniel Cormier, has become one of the most frequent commentators in recent years, but he hasn’t gone without facing criticism along the way.

Aside from Dominick Cruz’s specific complaint about “DC” failing to do his research, the most common knock against Cormier is that he’s biased for his team mates. Cormier is a longtime member of the American Kickboxing Academy (AKA), a premier gym in San Jose that has produced many world champions like Cain Velasquez and Khabib Nurmagomedov. A whole lot of UFC fighters have walked through the AKA doors, and detractors believe that Cormier favors them on the mic when they’re in the cage.

Cormier, however, argues the opposite. He believes he overcompensates and is quite critical of his team mates, which has left him in awkward positions previously.

“I’ve noticed and my friends have noticed that as much as people say you’re going to be biased towards a person that you care about, I tend to go the other direction, which is unfair to my guy,” Cormier told MMA Fighting. “But they understand and I try to call the fight as best I can. If a guy deserves praise, I give it to them.

“[There was] a real bad case of this with Blagoy [Ivanov]. Blagoy was fighting and he texted me on Monday and he goes ‘DC, did I not land anything?’ I said yes, you did and I gave you credit for it. He goes ‘it just seemed like you were so intent on what was happening to me.’ I said Blagoy, you weren’t winning but I have to check myself.”

Cormier also revealed that lately he’s been more willing to tune out the critics. In his opinion, it’s a case of a vocal minority that are doing the complaining.

“Part of the reason I was doing that was because I was listening to the voices when in reality those voices, it is the select few,” Cormier said. “The select few is always louder than the majority. So you have to forget about what the select few is doing and just do your job.”

His response begs the question: do you like Cormier’s commentary? Is it fair and unbiased? Hit the comments!

Insomnia

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I hope there are some scrambles between Brendan Allen and Paul Craig tomorrow evening.

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Slips, rips, and KO clips

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This man knew well just how hard the punch landed.

Anderson Silva is still among the most unique fighters to ever compete in the cage.

Random Land

The cutest thing I’ve seen in a while.

Midnight Music: I’m not a video game music guy generally, but the Persona series is good enough to be an exception.

Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.