Derrick Lewis and Daniel Cormier fought six years ago, but is there still bad blood to this day?
That appears to be the case at least on Lewis’ side as the veteran heavyweight cast Cormier in a negative light at Wednesday’s media day ahead of his fight with Jhonata Diniz at UFC Edmonton this Saturday. Lewis was asked what fight in his lengthy career he’d want to run back and “DC” was the name that came to mind.
“Probably DC,” Cormier said. “Because that’s still not sitting right with me, I don’t know. Do people really like DC like that?
“I told DC in his face, that guy a piece of shit. He’s a piece of shit, scumbag. F*ck DC.”
Lewis and Cormier met in the main event of UFC 230 in November 2018, with Cormier defending his heavyweight championship against “The Black Beast.” Cormier recorded his first and only successful heavyweight title defense, submitting Cormier in the second round.
When Lewis asked to elaborate on his issues with Cormier, he gave a cryptic response, joking about a past beef over a Popeyes chicken sponsorship, but then insulting Cormier again.
“DC know why,” Lewis said. “Everyone know why, too, he disrespect that Popeyes chicken, but other than that, he’s a piece of shit.”
Lewis’ comments made the rounds on social media, though it remains unclear how serious the often sardonic fighter intended to be.
During an episode of The Ariel Helwani Show on Wednesday, Helwani gave Cormier an impromptu call to sort out the situation, with the conversation arguably only raising more questions.
“I haven’t seen him for a while, but I was pretty hard on him about retiring because he had lost a couple of fights and I was kind of telling the truth and he seemed mad at me, but I haven’t seen him,” Cormier said. “I’m going to see him this weekend and I’m going to kind of ask him, ‘Yo, are you mad at me?’”
Lewis has seen mixed results in his past eight fights, with just three wins during that stretch, including a third-round knockout of Rodrigo Nascimento in his most recent outing this past May. In Cormier’s role as an on-air analyst and podcaster, he’s required to give his honest opinion on how fighters are performing and he believes he might have said something that rubbed Lewis the wrong way.
It’s important to note that Cormier was yet to see the clip of Lewis’ comments himself when discussing the matter with Helwani, so he was basing his response strictly on second-hand accounts. Still, real or not, Cormier sees no reason to reignite their former feud.
“It sounds like it may be a little underlying, he might be a little pissed at me because of the way I talked about him,” Cormier said. “I don’t know what fight it was where it he didn’t look great, but then he knocked the last guy out and I was like, ‘I’m glad he’s back.’ So I don’t know. My opinions go with their performances and I think maybe that’s what it is, but in terms of anything else, Derrick and I don’t really have many things that we do together outside of the Popeyes thing and then our fight.
“But we can’t be mad at each other, we already fought. It’s settled.”
