{"id":245048,"date":"2025-10-27T22:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T22:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245048\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T22:47:09","slug":"daniel-cormier-a-little-upset-tom-aspinall-released-viral-hot-mic-footage-before-ufc-321","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245048\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Cormier ‘a little upset’ Tom Aspinall released viral hot mic footage before UFC 321"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Cormier thinks Tom Aspinall<\/a> did him dirty by releasing footage of a private conversation between them before UFC 321<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During media day in advance of Saturday’s event in Abu Dhabi, Cormier pulled Aspinall (15-3 MMA, 8-1 UFC) aside following their pre-fight interview<\/a> and touted his ability to deliver a long reign as heavyweight champion, which has contenders like Jailton Almeida, who he said “can’t fight.”<\/p>\n

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Aspinall included footage of the conversation, where Cormier was whispering, in one of his video blogs and it quickly went viral. It wasn’t a good look for Cormier from an optics perspective, and he admitted fault for that while admitting it was foul for Aspinall’s team to publicize that footage.<\/p>\n

“Speaking of Jailton Almeida: Thank you so much for that YouTube video with Tom Aspinall,” Cormier said on his “Good Guy\/Bad Guy” podcast<\/a> with Chael Sonnen on ESPN. “Him and I were talking and the mic was on me and I was talking to Tom About the heavyweight division. I was literally trying to tell him, ‘You could possibly be on the verge of something tremendously special right now.’ In that statement I was saying, ‘Jailton is going to grapple you.’ It’s not as dangerous of a fight, and I could’ve done a better job of saying that to Tom.<\/p>\n

“Now, I was a little upset that Tom released that, if I’m being honest with you. When you lean into someone and you’re talking quietly, that’s a private conversation that should stay between you and the athlete. I thought it was ‘Embedded,’ and I know that ‘Embedded’ would never do something like that.”<\/p>\n

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Cormier did not say whether he addressed the situation with Aspinall directly. The reigning titleholder saw his UFC 321 title defense against Ciryl Gane (13-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) end in disaster when an eye poke from the challenger resulted in a no contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also on the card, Almeida suffered a split decision loss<\/a> to Alexander Volkov in a potential title eliminator. Although the performance, somewhat emphasized Cormier’s point to Aspinall in the video in that he landed just nine significant fights in a three-round fight that also included 11 minutes of control time, Cormier said he felt guilty when the world heard his comments.<\/p>\n

“Regardless of whether you’re saying it in jest or you’re being honest, Jailton Almeida deserves respect, and I do respect him,” Cormier said. “I felt bad because he’s been so nice to me since he got into the UFC, and I think Jailton Almeida is a great guy. I think he does need to round out his game because the grappling is elite, but there’s no damage.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Daniel Cormier ‘upset’ Tom Aspinall released viral hot mic video<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Cormier thinks Tom Aspinall did him dirty by releasing footage of a private conversation between them before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,797,786,103648,785,85,799,787],"class_list":["post-245048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-cormier","tag-fighting","tag-jailton-almeida","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-tom-aspinall","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}