Daniel Cormier submitted Anthony Johnson to win the UFC light heavyweight title at UFC 187 in May of 2015. Since then, Cormier retained his belt against Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 192 in Oct. 2015 and defeated Anderson Silva in a non-title affair at UFC 200 in July. Johnson’s netted three knockouts over Ryan Bader at UFC on Fox 18, Jimi Manuwa at UFC 191 and Glover Teixeira at UFC 202.
Now, they will meet again in the main event of UFC 210. Johnson feels he’s shored up his grappling game by bringing in Neil Melanson. The king of 205-pounds feels it doesn’t matter and Johnson will buckle under the pressure and quit once again.
“Yes, I do. I don’t ever change. He’ll give up. We’ve seen it too many times,” Cormier said on Monday’s edition of “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.
“He’ll still be able to fight for about 10 minutes, and then we’ll be good to go. There’s a difference in the training styles and the fighting styles of my team and his team. Right? So you saw Michael Johnson really get his hands on Khabib (Nurmagomedov) early, but after a while, man, that grind really starts to wear on you. And if you’re not built for it, you’re just not built for it.”
UFC 210 takes place on April 8th at the Keybank Center in Buffalo, NY.
