The Final Day with Daniel Cormier

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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The American Kickboxing Academy’s adjusted hours allow distractions for its elite athletes to be kept at a minimum for the camp’s afternoon pro team practice.

Set against the backdrop of Silicon Valley’s golden hills dying for water during severe drought, Daniel Cormier’s thirst for Ultimate Fighting Championship gold continues in the closed gym. He came up short in his first title bid inside the Octagon, falling to Jon Jones in a 25-minute New Year’s main event. Tasting defeat against such a heated rival on Jan. 3 pushed Cormier into the most depressing period of his athletic career. He did not leave the house for two weeks.

In mixed martial arts, timing is everything, and Cormier’s pain dissolved into the fortunate reality that the UFC had deemed him worthy of vying for the light heavyweight crown for the second time in five months. He squares off against Blackzilians powerhouse Anthony Johnson for the vacant 205-pound belt in the UFC 187 main event on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The Johnson-Cormier title fight was booked on late notice for the UFC’s yearly keystone Memorial Day weekend offering due to Jones being stripped of the championship following his hit-and-run incident in Albuquerque, N.M.

Cormier’s six-week camp for Johnson concluded with five MMA sparring rounds against heavyweight Blagoi Ivanov. In a grey T-shirt, blue sweat-shorts with white stars reminiscent of old glory and neon orange trainers, a worn Cormier, fresh out of the shower, laid on the black futon in head coach Javier Mendez’s office. He was on the way to pick up his kids but was alleviated of those duties. He propped his head up with pillows to rest while sharing concluding thoughts on the circumstances surrounding his second chance at the UFC light heavyweight championship.

“You can’t live in the darkness too long,” Cormier told Sherdog.com. “No one said this was going to be easy.”

In addition to support at home and from his team, a barrage of text messages from the kids he coaches in wrestling lifted Cormier’s stress following his first loss in 16 career fights.

“How do I tell these kids to rebound from losses if I can’t do it myself?” he asked.

When Cormier was heartbroken after kidney failure rendered him unable to wrestle for America in the 2008 Olympics, he took solace in imagining an athletic career ahead.

“I was still young,” he said, “and I knew there’d be something else.”

That something else was MMA and eventually the UFC, where he almost reached the pinnacle. The sting of the unanimous decision defeat to Jones dug deeper into Cormier because the coping mechanism he utilized for the 2008 Olympics was no longer available to him.

“At 35, losing [a fight] for the UFC championship, you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” Cormier said. “So you question yourself. You question, ‘What do you do to rebuild? How do I get back to this point? What is it going to take?’ Even though I got assurance from [UFC President] Dana [White] right after [UFC 182], he goes, ‘You’re not going anywhere. That was one hell of a fight.’”

The light heavyweight contender’s role as a TV analyst for Fox Sports grants him the flexibility to come back from a fight when he feels he is ready. Once he finally left the house and started putting the loss to Jones behind him, Cormier returned to his on-air role at the Fox Sports desk. At his first event back, 21 days after he bowed to Jones, Cormier watched Johnson march into Alexander Gustafsson’s home country of Sweden. Johnson punched out “The Mauler” in 135 seconds, making the resurgent “Rumble” the No. 1 contender for Jones’ belt; their match was scheduled for UFC 187. Meanwhile, Cormier accepted a bout in his home state of Louisiana on June 6, as he agreed to face Ryan Bader and move on with his career in the cage.

Then Jones ran into serious trouble, his hit-and-run accident the latest in a series of missteps away from the cage. Having seen enough, the UFC stripped “Bones” of the light heavyweight title he had held for more than four years. Bader was quick to respond. On April 26, he posted a message on Twitter: “If the rumors are true with Jones, hope everyone is ok & if I’m needed to step in 4 the belt I am more than willing to fight AJ @danawhite.” Cormier had originally planned to halt Bader’s four-fight winning streak and position himself for a crack at the winner of Jones-Johnson, but the tweet gave him an idea.

“Hell, forget Twitter. I started calling the bosses,” he said. “S--t, I want the chance. I’m over here 15-1, [and the] only loss I’ve ever had was [to] the best pound-for-pound guy in the world. Look at me. I’m still here.”

What felt like a year waiting for a response was more like a day. Johnson-Cormier for the vacant belt was made official, with the oddsmakers installing “DC” as the slight favorite.

“Fans and people in the public, they remember your last [fight],” Cormier said. “Their last memory of you -- is me crying at the press conference, of Jones getting his hand raised. [With] Anthony, it’s smashing Alexander, who did so well against Jon.”

Cormier recognizes the public’s current perception of him, but he insists oddsmakers have their jobs for a reason. This is his fourth training camp for a five-round fight -- he has had two 25-minute bouts in the UFC and Strikeforce, and two others were postponed due to injury.

“I hope that those experiences will help me in this fight,” Cormier said. “There’s a difference. Whereas Jon had the championship experience over me, I have the championship experience over Anthony.”

When Johnson returned to the UFC in April 2014, Cormier knew their paths would someday cross. Johnson possesses a dangerous, fight-ending dose of momentum, confidence and power that could prevent Cormier from achieving his UFC championship goal at any time during their five-round battle. Cormier has seen past opponents carrying the unbeatable monster tag that Johnson’s current nine-fight winning streak affords him.

“I’ve climbed those hills,” said the onetime Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix winner. “I’ve won those battles. It feels good. It means a ton to me; it’s another opportunity to do something so special.”

Despite being taken down by Jones for the first time in his six-year career, Cormier still believes he holds a wrestling advantage over everyone. Another point of confidence in this second go at the belt is that it represents the first time in a year that Cormier and UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez have trained together for a fight. What went wrong against Jones in Cormier’s estimation is a mistake he cannot afford to make again.

“I lost myself in that fight,” said Cormier, who went on to call himself “lazy” for counting scorecards in his head during the critical fourth round. At the time, he thought he was winning. “Anytime you don’t stay on task, you run the risk of what happened to me. Jon took the momentum. He was able to win those last two rounds. It was him staying on course and me losing focus, losing sight of what was important, and that was being in that moment.”

Mendez thinks the reason Cormier thought he was ahead on the scorecards was that he had never previously lost rounds. However, Mendez and cornerman Bob Cook bluntly told Cormier between rounds four and five that he needed to stop Jones to become champion.

“DC is not going to make that mistake again -- coasting -- because I think that cost him,” Mendez said after reclaiming his office.

UFC middleweight contender Luke Rockhold chimed in from the airport on his way back to San Jose to begin fight week with Cormier. He sees a key difference between the last title fight camp and this one: Cormier has been properly pacing himself. Velasquez has supplied the right firepower to simulate dealing with someone as dangerous as Johnson, building key instincts to cover up from devastating shots and change levels to keep the opponent guessing and on the defensive.

“It’s just keeping a calm mindset; that’s the biggest thing,” Rockhold said. “Don’t get caught up [in it]. He got a little emotional, overaggressive, last time with Jones, and it worked against him.”

In staying calm, Rockhold sees an opportunity for Cormier to execute the game plan and prevent Johnson from sitting on his punches to maximize their effect.

“They’re both multidimensional guys,” Rockhold said. “I just think we can push harder, longer.”

For every advantage Johnson owns, Rockhold insists he can name two for his teammate, namely Cormier’s wrestling and top game on the mat.

“There’s a lot of advantages we have in this fight versus what Anthony has with his power and the short time frame where he has to get it done,” he said. “He has to land that big shot, which I don’t see him doing.”

If Cormier can stay away from Johnson’s thunderous punches, the self-proclaimed “King of the Grind” will have a clear path to becoming the next king of the UFC light heavyweight division. A week out from the weigh-in and with 14 pounds left to cut in order to make the 205-pound limit, Cormier knows everything has to be on point -- the weight, the mindset, the in-competition performance -- to topple Johnson and take up residence on the UFC’s light heavyweight throne.

“I win this belt, I’ve done everything I can do in the sport of MMA,” he said. “I win the UFC championship, I’ve won the Strikeforce championship, it doesn’t get any bigger than that, unless I go and win the Bellator belt for some weird reason. I’ve won the two biggest organizations in the world’s championships. That would mean everything to me.”

Danny Acosta is a freelance writer that has contributed to FOX Sports and Maxim Magazine, among others. He can be heard weekly on the Sirius XM Fight Club for the “Acosta KO” segment (Sirius XM 92 Thursdays 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT).