Cormier versus Gustafsson: What Makes a Champion

Come Sunday morning the detractors were silent.

Those who had made noise about their disinterest were converts and those who had declared it to be no more than a paper champion against a fake challenger were nowhere to be found. Daniel Cormier and Alexander Gustafsson had done battle with their hearts on their sleeves and their twenty-five minutes of hurly-burly shone light on a sacred rule at the core of combat. For the individual the fight is about wile and deceit and yet as it comes to be fought more evenly the fight extracts the absolute truth about both men. The champion who never faces adversity might as well be an automaton. It is only when we see a man's skill fail and his will tested that we know whether or not he has the makings of true greatness.

It is the truth at the center of the great fights of history. From the days ancient Greece to the trilogy between Gatti and Ward. The art of fighting is pretty but a truly magnetic bout stems from the failure of that craft. When Muhammad Ali met Joe Frazier in Manila it was no great tactical battle. One man was hurt and then the other and so on until the close. There were shifts in pace and momentum but the game never changed. When a fight is so close that victory and survival become one and the same, you will see the best that the human spirit has to offer and in that moment you will know the appeal of the fight game.

Gustafsson was on his game from the start. His oft-noted dancer's feet beat a fast pace around the mat. Two full laps of the cage had been achieved in the first half-minute. But the champion, Cormier found instant success with the archenemy of lateral movement: the inside low kick. As the Swede strafed to his right, his left leg trailed. Cormier made a step up to slam in a left kick across Gustafsson's inseam and pinned his man in place. The shot came immediately as Cormier dropped to snatch up his foe's hips. Cormier joined his hands around Gustafsson's left leg and shifted his head to the outside to attack with the high crotch single. In a beat he had the Swede aloft in the same lift up he had used on Dan Henderson and Josh Barnett with equal ease.

The first round was given up by Gustafsson, who could scarcely get off of his back once Cormier put him there. It was in the second round that the fight began to take on its character. Gustafsson opened up with a couple of nice combinations and was able to hit Cormier's body at one point in each of them.

Gustafsson moved to intercept Cormier with a knee to the midsection as he so often does against shorter men, the champion caught a hold and began to chase the takedown. Gustafsson ran and pummeled and turned and broke free. As Cormier stepped in again after losing his takedown he was met by one of Gustafsson's own.

The Swede might have been seen as the wrong man to challenge the champ as his last fight was a knockout loss but he had delivered another one of those shocking Gustafsson moments. A world class wrestling record is a leg up in MMA but at some point every fighter is out of position to defend their hips. Gustafsson found Jon Jones' blip off of a parried side kick but against Cormier it was after the Swede had fought off Cormier's takedown attempt as if to flee a flaming building. Suddenly he turned around and ran right back in and Cormier was left bamboozled.

But Cormier rallied fast as he got back to his feet. He pursued the challenger and he ran onto a long right uppercut. The favorite of Willie Pep, a long uppercut from below the guard as the opponent gives chase. One that Gustafsson loves as well.

But suddenly the stakes of the fight rose exponentially as the two fell into a clinch. The rules of boxing quickly did away with the act of holding and hitting in the prize ring just to deal with the specific technique Cormier used next to such effect. Hanging on the neck and throwing uppercuts is one of the easiest ways to bloody a man up and Cormier is an Olympian in the great sport of hanging on men's necks. The fact that he has come to hit so fast and so hard made a sticky position that much more dangerous. Where Gustafsson had scored a psychological victory, Cormier was scoring a very painful physical one with his vertical fist, pinky out uppercuts from down by his hips.

Through the end of the second round and the beginning of the third round the two men were at their most thoughtful. Gustafsson worked from orthodox and southpaw stance, threw knees as Cormier stepped in, and scored that Pep uppercut time and again. Meanwhile Cormier threw overhands and stepping rights and looked to achieve that collar tie in order land more uppercuts. By the midway point of the third the fight had seemed to turn in Cormier's favour again as he spread a mask of claret across Gustafsson's face with repeated flurries of uppercuts in the clinch. Gustafsson was dazed and running but found himself back in the clinch time after time. Just when it seemed Gustafsson was out to survive, he raised a knee and connected flush on the champion's jaw. Cormier fell and Gustafsson flurried this time. There were shades of Gustafsson's knockout of Jimi Manuwa that night in London where I found myself crying out in amazement 'He's done him!'. An innocuous clinch was suddenly a near fight ending knockdown.

Suddenly it was Cormier pushing away and Gustafsson holding onto him in desperate hopes of finishing. Ownership of the clinch had changed hands and Cormier wanted nothing to do with it. Cormier survived and moments later was back to throwing his heavy leather and chasing Gustafsson. In the fourth the fight devolved. Neither man was thinking anymore, the craft was gone and both were stuck in their ways. Cormier was unable to cut the ring or had simply never learned and had abadoned the low kicks only to follow Gustafsson around the cage. Gustafsson continued to run and attempt to catch Cormier coming in. Each time they fell into a clinch Cormier hammered home his uppercuts and Gustafsson held two hands on one as he tried to stop the right hand swinging in. Each time they were out in the open Gustafsson jabbed and hooked. The body shots were gone, the takedowns were gone, every semblance of craft had left the men and they were there to hit and get hit.

At the end of the last round it seemed as though Cormier had done enough to hold his title and he won a split decision. Neither man gave a poor account of himself and the bout took on the feel of one of the greats. From a technical perspective it was clear that Cormier still only has one means of closing the distance and it is the most basic one, walking forwards. Were Cormier to work out how to cut the ring effectively, he might have ended up in those punishing clinches with Jon Jones more often than simply eating three body kicks before Jones circled out and he had to start all over again. Cormier still hates the gut kicks and it seemed as though he felt lucky that Gustafsson did not commit to them in this already gruelling five round bout. But Gustafsson is the same man too. Always looking to feint a dozen blows to land one knockout punch to the head, Gustafsson could really benefit from varying his targets. The Swede left Cormier limping with just a handful of low kicks. While the threat of the takedown a real one and its never fun to kick at someone who wants to tackle you, Gustafsson's own success with takedowns highlighted Cormier's loss of focus on that part of the game.

I struggle to think that there are still fight fans out there that have not got the memo about styles making fights, but clearly there are. Getting knocked out by Anthony Johnson didn't stop Alexander Gustafsson giving Daniel Cormier one of the roughest nights of his career, while Cormier easily did away with Johnson. With the climax of the Jon Jones affair on its way, perhaps it is good to remember that. A record is really just a sheet of numbers. What happens on the night is down to the styles and wills of the two participants and none of those numbers have a damn bit of sway.