{"id":480977,"date":"2026-02-15T05:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T05:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/480977\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T05:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T05:12:07","slug":"daniel-cormier-weighs-in-on-vicious-boxing-beef-feb-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/480977\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Cormier Weighs-In On Vicious Boxing Beef Feb. 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Cormier<\/a>, a UFC Hall of Fame inductee and a mainstay on telecasts of UFC flagship events for years, has seen and heard practically everything regarding the sport, both pro and con. Recently, though, a boxing kingpin got under the skin of \u201cDC\u201d and the UFC roster.<\/p>\n

Shakur Stevenson<\/a> (25-0, 11 KOs,) whose career highlights include championship victories in four weight divisions, ruffled more than a few feathers, including those of Daniel Cormier, when he challenged current UFC Lightweight Champion Ilia Topuria (17-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) to a match inside the squared circle.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell him to come fight me,\u201d Stevenson said. \u201cI don\u2019t care. Tell him to come fight me. The skill level is different [in boxing.] In his comments, Shakur Stevenson also said that he did not believe that former UFC Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones would be able to make it as a boxer.<\/p>\n

Daniel Cormier Defends Joaquin Buckley\u2019s Stance on Boxing Debate<\/p>\n

These remarks by the undefeated Stevenson didn\u2019t sit too well with UFC welterweight Joaquin Buckley<\/a> (21-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC,) who defended the sport of MMA<\/a> on social media earlier this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop disrespecting us, bro,\u201d Buckley said. \u201cWe are way more entertaining than y\u2019all. If we came outside, I would kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the latest episode of\u00a0<\/a>The Daniel Cormier Show,\u00a0Cormier addressed Joaquin Buckley\u2019s comments to Shakur Stevenson at the top of the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, Shakur Stevenson said [that] the UFC could never be boxing,\u201d Daniel Cormier began. \u201cJoaquin Buckley was right. Like, it doesn\u2019t have to be boxing, because the reality is there\u2019s no big fights like there were in the past. I want [the UFC] to be the boxing of the \u201970s, \u201980s and \u201990s. If I was trying to be boxing, I would want to be boxing of that era and of that time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Daniel Cormier on Current State of Boxing<\/p>\n

When it comes to modern-day pugilism, Cormier didn\u2019t mince words on the state of the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoxing today isn\u2019t necessarily what I would want to be and what it used to be,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause there just aren\u2019t enough stars to make big fights. There aren\u2019t enough big events to make us go back to the days when Ali was fighting, or when Tyson was fighting, or when you had the Four Kings and they were all fighting each other. I\u2019m talking even the days of Lennox Lewis being the heavyweight champion, even the Klitschko brothers! It was different back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose fights brought more attention back then and they felt bigger!,\u201d Daniel Cormier continued. \u201cI understand today that when Canelo [Alvarez] fought Terence Crawford, it felt like a big event, but honestly, whenever I get super excited for these boxing fights, until you get young, exciting prospects that want to go out there and try to knock people out like the guys from the past, you\u2019re going to get the fight that we got where Terence Crawford, who showed once again why he is the best, he just controlled Canelo Alvarez, who\u2019s the biggest star of this generation, and it is just not that fun, honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts: Daniel Cormier Right on the Money<\/p>\n

Simply and succinctly put, the statements from Daniel Cormier in response to the comments made by Shakur Stevenson and Joaquin Buckley\u2019s rebuttal\u00a0 are most-accurate. The state of boxing in 2026 is different than it was several decades ago.<\/p>\n

Gone are the days of USA Network airing\u00a0Tuesday Night Fights\u00a0most weeks, as well as the era of\u00a0ABC\u2019s Wide World of Sports\u00a0showing edited for broadcast television versions of marquee boxing fights a few weeks after they were shown live on premium cable. ABC was supposed to have shown an event in 2007, but the card never materialized.<\/p>\n

Even Bob Arum\u2019s Top Rank is no longer on traditional television and hasn\u2019t been since last July. Recent Top Rank shows have been streamed on the Top Rank Classics FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television) channel. Boxing can\u2019t survive solely on marquee names any longer. The sport has to give up-and-coming prospects their flowers, as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Cormier, a UFC Hall of Fame inductee and a mainstay on telecasts of UFC flagship events for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-480977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480977","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=480977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}