One of the more odd circumstances to come out of last weekend’s UFC 216 concerned one of the night’s headliners, being Kevin Lee. Lee walked into the octagon for the night’s main event with a strange mark on his chest. The mark was immediately addressed by cageside commentators Joe Rogan and Daniel Cormier as potentially being a staph infection.
While the night’s event went on as normal, it still created an odd moment for the commentators that were seemingly in the dark on the situation. Now Daniel Cormier has come forward to reveal that he was actually being asked to not mention the infection through his headset.
Speaking on his podcast Talk and Talker, as transcribed by Bloody Elbow, Cormier broke down the situation.
“So we’re on air, right, and Rogan goes ‘is that staph?’ And somebody in my ear, I don’t know who it is goes ‘don’t say nothing.’ And I was like ‘What the hell? Do I address this, or do I not say anything?’
“So I was like ‘it is.’ I couldn’t help myself, I go ‘it is staph.’ Because it’s big and red, and raised up.”
Kevin Lee would go on to suffer a submission loss to Tony Ferguson, earning “El Cucuy” the interim lightweight title. Daniel Cormier believes that the alleged staph infection may have had a negative effect on Lee’s performance at UFC 216.
“The issue is you can take antibiotics to get better. But again, antibiotics, it’s the devil when you’re getting ready for a fight because it f—ks with your cardio. You don’t really have much of an option in terms of feeling better when you have staph.
“In training, you go ‘oh my goodness, what is this? It might me staph.’ You stop, you get on antibiotics, and you get better. When you’re a week from the biggest fight of your career, you go ‘oh shit, this is staph, but I gotta keep training.’ You don’t have the option to just shut it down.”
