UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier and middleweight fighter Phil Hawes recently got into a verbal altercation inside the Octagon.
Hawes (12-3) took on Cormier’s American Kickboxing Academy teammate Deron Winn during UFC on ESPN 37 in Austin, Texas, on Saturday. And Hawes picked up a second-round TKO victory over Winn during the event’s preliminary card. While Hawes was waiting for the result to be made official, he took aim at Cormier, who was working as a color commentator for the broadcast.
Watch the incident below via the Twitter embed:
Daniel Cormier vs Hawes #UFCAustin
After “DC” entered the Octagon, Hawes went off (h/t MMA Fighting): “You picked the wrong pony! Yeah, you dog. You know what I’m talking about. I’ll cool off and then next week you can fight me.”
“I don’t pick fights,” Cormier responded. “Be respectful. You didn’t beat me. I don’t pick fights.
“Look at what happened. Why would I want this fight? You can do it better than that, don’t do that.”
After a prolonged back and forth, which referee Herb Dean tried to stop, Hawes eventually said: “I apologize.”
Besides Cormier’s relationship with Winn, it’s unclear at the time of this writing why Hawes unloaded on DC.
In short, DC ‘Is Not Apologizing’ for Doing His Job as a Commentator
Cormier recently spoke with MMA Junkie, and he addressed criticism that he’s received as a commentator. For example, DC has been accused of “bagging” on Tony Ferguson, as well as not doing proper research before events.
“Indifference is a problem,” Cormier said. “I’ve taken that from my fighting career where people were kind of divided on me. You had the guys that cheered and the people that booed and it’s the same thing with commentary. I know how hard I work at this. I know how much time I spend preparing for this. I know (what) I try to give these guys and tell their stories and do them justice. Sometimes, people just don’t see what you see and that’s really on them. But I’m not apologizing for doing my job, and I think that’s the beauty in being a fighter.
“People can be mad at you, but it’s like we just gotta talk about it, right? I’m not a guy that – they gotta move a little different around me. I don’t really worry about it too much. Rogan told me, I was on some, ‘Ah the fans, this, this’ and then Rogan said it on air. He goes, ‘Oh, you gotta be careful with our bias commentary.’ He just doesn’t care. He just does not care because the reality is it does not matter. You’re put in a position to do a job that is very, very difficult and very few people in the world can do it, so you do it to the best of your ability.”
Cormier Said He Doesn’t Watch Fights ‘With a Bias’
DC said to MMA Junkie that he isn’t biased with his commentary. In fact, if a teammate is fighting and he’s working the broadcast, Cormier said he’ll sometimes go “the opposite way” with his commentary.
“I don’t watch this with a bias,” Cormier said. “If my teammates are fighting, I hope that they win. But unfortunately when that happens, I tend to go the opposite way. Blagoy (Ivanov) was mad at me after his last fight because he he was like, ‘DC, bro, I was doing good things, but you almost made it seem like…’ I tend to go the opposite way to try not to.
“Deron Winn when he’s fighting he’s like ‘Dude.’ It’s hard because you’re a human being. That’s why at a point I can sympathize with the referees and the judges because they’re human beings.”
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Daniel Cormier & UFC Fighter Get Into Viral Argument Inside Octagon