With just one current American UFC champion, Daniel Cormier has a plan.
With just one current American UFC champion, Daniel Cormier has a plan.
Kayla Harrison (19-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC), a former two-time Olympic gold medalist judoka, is the lone American fighter on the UFC roster to hold a title. She submitted Julianna Peña to become bantamweight champion at UFC 316.
Outside of the BMF belt which Max Holloway currently holds and the interim lightweight title which Justin Gaethje claimed at UFC 324, all the other UFC champions are non-Americans. Cormier, a two-time Olympic wrestler (2004, 2008) and former U.S. team captain, has concocted an idea to make sure that changes.
"The American wrestler isn't as open to fighting as we need them to be, but I have a plan," Cormier said in an interview with "Y'all Street." "I'm getting American wrestlers to fight. I love those guys. I love Khabib (Nurmagomedov). I love Islam (Makhachev). Those guys are the best. But I want American wrestlers as champions.
"I think that's the only group of people to go and get it back. It's going to be the American wrestler, because guess what? It's the Eastern European wrestler that's the champion – very few strikers. They're wrestlers that are champions. We've got to get our wrestlers back going into the sport of mixed martial arts."
No one has had an answer for the wrestling of Cormier's teammates, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev (28-1 MMA, 17-1 UFC), who both dominated the UFC's lightweight division. Makhachev took things a step further by claiming the welterweight title with a dominant showing against Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Daniel Cormier plans to build American wrestlers to become UFC champs
Category: General Sports
