Daniel
Cormier says he discovered something was off with him thanks to
a smart ring device.
COVID-19 impacted DC’s life this summer. In a recent interview with
Yahoo Sports, the former
Ultimate Fighting Championship two-division king revealed that
he started to guess something was wrong midway through his training
camp for UFC 252. On July 1, one of Cormier’s teammates tested
positive for the virus. Even though the tests of Cormier — who
immediately wanted to make sure he had not been infected — came
back negative a few days later, he began to feel symptoms by the
end of that week.
“But over the weekend, I started feeling a little sick,” Cormier
said. “Things weren’t exactly … well, let me put it this way: I
wasn’t sick, but I got a little tired and peaked. Monday comes, I
go to practice and I spar and I worked out three times. I felt OK,
but I was a little bit tired is, I guess, how I would put it.”
The constant fatigue summed up with an unusually high resting heart
rate and low readiness scores — a sort of general check-up
measured thanks to his smart ring — forced “DC” to go to the
doctor, where he discovered he had COVID-19. He recovered in time
to face Stipe
Miocic once again for the heavyweight championship in Las Vegas
on Aug. 15. That night, the defending champion proved to be the
better man and upended Cormier after five rounds of battle. Yet,
the former champ doesn’t make any excuses for that loss.
“This is not an excuse at all,” Cormier concluded. “Miocic won the
fight and he fought beautifully.”
Following his back-to-back defeats with Miocic, “DC” announced his
retirement from MMA. Cormier’s achievements include holding both
the UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight championships
simultaneously, the second man ever to become a dual two-division
champion after Conor
McGregor.