UFC fighter Sam Hughes and her coach Eddie Grant have responded to Daniel Cormier’s comments from UFC 256.
On Saturday night, Hughes lost to Tecia Torres as a result of a doctor stoppage courtesy of an eye injury. It turns out that she wound up being diagnosed with hyphema, or pooling of blood inside the eye, and the UFC’s ophthalmologist said that her iris was 80% filled with blood.
During the broadcast, UFC commentator Daniel Cormier had the following to say on the ordeal in the actual moment.
“As an athlete, you know if you say you can’t see, the referee is going to come in there and stop it,” Cormier said in the moment. “You could say, ‘Ah, I want to go. I want to go. I want to go.’ But if that man in the suit goes in, the guy from the commission, and he looks into your eyes – I did this in August (against Stipe Miocic). ‘DC, can you see?’ (You say), ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ because you want to go fight.
“… I’m not trying to crap on Sam Hughes here by any way, but just saying, ‘I can’t see’ tells the guy you’re done. They’re going to make you stop because even if her coaches let her go, the commission will come in and talk to you, and then it’s over.”
With the implication being that Hughes gave up, she and her coach Eddie Grant were disappointed to hear those words from Cormier – as they confirmed during an interview with MMA Junkie.
“I’m sorry, but that really got to me,” Grant said. “First of all, Sam is a huge fan of Daniel Cormier – and she always has been. Then for him to be like, ‘She’s quitting’ and all this stuff, I know that that was hurtful to her. … The thing is that she wasn’t quitting. She would’ve continued to fight. Sam got her arm broken in a fight and came back and won. I have no question about whether she’ll continue to fight. You’re going in there in your UFC debut, and it just so happens we took the fight on five days’ notice. We cut 17 pounds, made weight, and then went and fought the No. 10 girl on planet earth.”
Hughes added, “(Quitting) wasn’t my intention at all. He asked a question, and I answered it. But if you look at the footage, I was like, ‘No, no, no, please don’t stop it,’ because I had full intentions of going into the second and third round.”
What did you think of Daniel Cormier’s comments from Sam Hughes?