Cormier has had a strong 2018 that resulted in him not only defending the Light Heavyweight belt successfully, but shocking the world by defeating Stipe Miocic for the UFC Heavyweight belt at UFC 226.
However, the plan for the Heavyweight champ was always to retire at the age of 40, but due to injuries from his previous fight with Derrick Lewis, its preventing him from returning to the octagon thus Cormier has decided that he won’t retire on his birthday, which was announced on The MMA Hour:
“I just don’t know if I’m gonna do what I did in New York again, where I have to fight where I’m not 110 percent,” Cormier said.
“Because I truly do feel like the reason my back went out was because I went from zero to trying to prepare for a fight in three weeks and I can’t really do that. I need those first four weeks of a pre-training camp just to prepare my body to go through a full eight-week camp. I used to do 12 weeks, I did all that in four and that’s why my body started falling apart on me.
“12 weeks and I’m not at 100 percent, so say, I don’t know, spring? Summer? I don’t know. Not exactly sure yet.”
Cormier does talk about UFC officials looking to respect his retirement plans by booking him in a bout on March 2 for UFC 235, but the Heavyweight champ wasn’t able to do it due to his injuries. His opponent was never locked for the event, but Cormier is still looking to fight Brock Lesnar; however, the Louisiana native makes it clear that he isn’t waiting for Lesnar to fight again:
“I think maybe Lesnar next would be the fight,” Cormier said.
“And again as I’ve always said, yeah I’ll fight Stipe again. It’s just the same exact thing.”
“We’re not waiting for Brock Lesnar. Because of my injuries, I’m just not available to fight. If I was available to fight, I probably would have fought Stipe already. But I’m just not available to fight right now so we’ll see what happens with Lesnar and then we’ll address what’s after that.”