UFC
Daniel Cormier says he'll be "very disappointed" in Jon Jones if Champ doesn't target injured knee at UFC 178
Jul 29, 2014 - 3:00:37 PM Daniel Cormier says he'll be "very disappointed" in Jon Jones if Champ doesn't target injured knee at UFC 178

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Prior to accepting a fight with Jon Jones for UFC 178 in September, Daniel Cormier was expected to undergo surgery for a knee injury he's been dealing with off and on. Now that he's no longer getting the procedure done, the conversation turns to whether or not he'll be fully prepared come Sept. 27 for that fight.

As he tells it, Cormier has been wary of the surgery to begin with, and he feels like he's feeling just well enough with the knee that it's not going to hamper his preparations.

"You know what it really was, just, I'm not big on surgery," Cormier said in an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. "I've had a ton of them. I broke my thumb playing football and I broke my arm wrestling. I broke my hand fighting, I had to take out my appendix, I had to fix my collar bone when I was a kid. So I've had a lot of surgeries, and it seems as though, as medicine has improved, surgeries, they don't always work, which is crazy.

"When I got the surgeries back in the 80's, I never had to go back because my surgery didn't take. You didn't see stuff like King Mo's staph infection or, I got another friend, his name is Wayne, he's going back to re-fix his ACL again because it didn't heal the correct way, or Dominick Cruz, where he kept injuring himself after the thing was supposed to be fixed. So I'm not real big on surgery right now."

"[I told my doctor] let me just see how this LCL feels in a month or so and I'll let you know," he said. "And my LCL doesn't hurt anymore, so now my knee just feels like it always has. I'm doing everything. I'm wrestling. I was at Jay Glazer's gym the other day, we were training with some NFL players and we started doing back handsprings, and I did a backflip. If I can do a backflip, my knee is fine."

While he's feeling alright at the moment, the knee does become a target once the fight hits in September, and given Jones' penchant for some brutal tactics in the cage, he'll be expected to go after the injury. As far as Cormier's concerned, he wouldn't expect anything less.

"If he didn't [use it], I'd be very disappointed in him," Cormier said. "As a competitor, I'd be very disappointed in Jon Jones if he didn't. But as a competitor, he's had injuries too that I need to target, and I'm going to."

"If we're in the clinch and I'm not foot-stomping his toe, then I'm not giving myself the best chance to win this fight. If there is a known injury, we should try and win at all costs. I mean, I thought it was great that he wrenched on Glover Teixeira's arm when he had the opportunity because that shows you that he's vicious enough to try and win at all costs, and now he's in the cage with someone who's willing to do the same exact thing."

For his part, Jones is willing to play along:

I'll try not to "disappoint" you DC

— Jon Bones Jones (@JonnyBones) July 29, 2014

Penick's Analysis: So long as the attacks are within the rules set forth, and they're not delivering illegal blows, it's all fair game. Jones has understood that from day one, as it's not a new thing to see him employ some less than wholesome moves in the cage. Cormier understands it as well, and he's going to do everything in his power to be the man to beat Jones. This fight is massively intriguing for so many reasons at this point, and their continued back and forth is only going to bring that further up into September.